Whatever it takes
by baby-kitsune9
Summary: they were devastated when they found charile died.She had been everything to them.A friend,a comrade, someone to come home too.their future was looking uncertain.But charlie had planned for the unlikely event of her death, and left them a gift ThrottlexOc
1. Chapter 1

She never saw it coming. Although on some level she knew that this day would come inevitably, she just hadn't expected it to happen today when her _boys_ were due back at the garage any minute now.

She put up a fight. God knew that she wasn't the type to just lay down and die without fighting back, but in the end it wasn't enough.

Her enemy got her.

The blade of his bowie knife sliding through the soft tissues of her stomach while she had been momentarily distracted by the fact that _three_ of her fingers had been cut off of her right hand by his blade before he had stepped in real close and slide his blade home inside of her.

She gasped in shock as a _horrible agony_ spread through her body, causing her legs to buckle as she heard a soft, raspy, chilling laugh as she fell to the floor with the blade still embedded in her body and lay there on her side on her once clean white tile floor. Her blood staining it red in at an alarming rate as she tried to breathe through the pain as she turned her head slightly to look at the man standing over her.

All she could see was shaggy, semi long, greasy blond hair, and dark eyes filled with malicious glee. "_Y-You-_" Charlie managed to rasp as she glared at the familiar face of the man who had come to her one time before.

A long, long time ago when she had still been a mother trying to raise her child on her own.

Back then her wold had revolved around PTA meetings, and helping her daughter with her homework after school. And this man-this _bastard_ had ruined everything when he had taken an unhealthy interest in her little girl and started threatening Charlie so that he could scare her into bowing to his will.

But Charlie had never been the type to listen, especially to creeps like this guy. It wasn't in her nature to let someone_ hurt_ her family and get away with it. So to save her daughter, she had sent her away to live with her father.

It had been a mistake to send her baby to her father, but at the time it had been all that she could think of-

The man gave her a feral smile. Flattered that Charline Davidson remembered him after all this time. "Hello Charlie." He said politely as he knelt down next to her and said in a hushed tone. "I've come for what's mine."

Charlie made a growling sound as blood slipped down her chin as she pulled the knife from her body and tried to slit his throat with it. It didn't work, and the movement jostled her so badly that her vision dimmed. He made a tsking sound and carefully took the blade from her. "That wasn't very sporting of you Charlie."

"Ask me if I care-" Charlie wheezed as her vision slowly returned. She thought it was just a little ironic that he thought that she should give him a chance when he was the one who had ambushed _her_ without warning.

The asshole. "Where is she Charlie?" He asked after a second or so of silence. Charlie gave him a feral smile through the pain haze fog that was consuming her mind. She. She was her little girl and thanks to her careful and meticulous planning, this son of a bitch would never get near her baby again.

She wasn't going to tell him shit.

He waited and after a moment or so sighed then kicked her in the stomach. She screamed as the wound in her flesh tore open a little more, causing the agony to build in her until she couldn't think, couldn't see. All she could do was scream...

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okay there is that chapter.

the next one will sort of lead to a small one week time jump. I'll do flash backs of charlies funeral and stuff a little later on okay.

in the mean time please read and review. I'm a bit anxious since this is my first BMFM fic.

I hope that it's as good as some of the others that i've read.


	2. Chapter 2

One week and three days later-

Sun light streamed through the cream colored curtains, illuminating the once dark room with pinkish, orange and yellow light as the figure laying on the bed groaned and buried his face under one of the pillows to block out the annoying light as he slept. His mind playing and replaying the events leading up to Charlene's death in great detail.

He could recall every laugh, every smile, every worried expression-

His mind shifted to what he had seen the day that she had died, suddenly and without any warning and he made a funny sound in the back of his throat as his fingers curled in the sheets and shivered despite the warmth of the room.

_"Charlie, we're back do you have any-" He paused in mid step when he heard a funny little wheezing sound coming from the kitchen_. _Frowning he moved over to the counter and craned his neck to see if he could locate the source of the sound, thinking that something might be damaged and worrying that he would need to grab his bro's and Charlie and get the hell out of dodge before the garage blew up or something and nearly screamed when he saw the deep, deep red stain spread across the white tile floor a brief second or so before he saw the woman herself. _

_Oh shit- "Charlie!" He had shouted without realizing it as he had climbed up onto the kitchen counter and then scrambled off of it again and dropped to the floor next to her and carefully looked over her wounds as his bro's had come running. _

_She looked at him through pain glazed, aqua eyes as blood ran down her chin, staining the front of her favorite pale blue shirt a deep, deep crimson. "Oh god, Charlie-babe..." Modo breathed as he took in the situation and grabbed the nearest dish towel and dropped down to the floor next to Throttle and started to rip the towel, but stopped himself and simply placed it against the deep jagged wound on her stomach, causing a keening, crying sound to come from Charlie's throat as she blinked her eyes and struggled to breathe..._

He moaned and rolled over onto his back as his heart slammed against his ribs in distress before a loud crash had him jack knifing upright and flinging the pillow aside as one hand automatically went for his laser gun and froze when he felt nothing in his hand as a loud bellow pulled him from his state of semi consciousness to full alertness.

"Dammit Vinny, how many times have I told you to pick up after yourself!"

He blinked, looked around the room and could see nothing but white. _Damn, I lost my shades again._ He thought in irritation as he rubbed his face with his hands, blindly looking for his shades before he finally found them, sitting on the bed several feet away. Probably where he had put them when the cool green metal had bitten into the soft skin behind one of his ears. He picked them up and placed them over his eyes and looked around, noting that the room that he was in wasn't his own.

There was far too much lace and frills on certain things for the room to be his. Which meant that he had fallen asleep in Charlie's room again.

Not that it mattered much since she wouldn't ever be using it again. He sighed and ran his fingers through his semi long soft brown hair, pushing his bangs back from his face before standing up and quietly making his way over to the door and pulling it open and slipping out.

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The dining room looked like a war zone.

Throttle mused as he stepped into the room and blinked at the over turned table, the broken dishes and the food splattered all over the floor and one of the walls.

But that wasn't all he could see. No, he could also see his two bro's rolling around on the floor throwing punches at each other, and muttering insults and swears in between grunts and yelps. God, would they never grow up? Throttle wondered as he walked over to the two fighting males and slammed both of their heads together to get them to stop.

Both mice yelped and automatically separated from each other and looked up at him as they rubbed their heads. "Ow. What did you do that for?" Modo asked as he gave Throttle a wary look. Wondering if the younger martians infamous temper was about to make a surprise appearance.

He hoped not since he doubted that the garage would survive if Throttle flew into a rage over_ something_. Throttle wasn't their leader for just any old reason after all. He was their leader because he was the most volatile of them.

The most _cunning_ and _ruthless_.

The one who had become one of the youngest leaders in the martian army when he had been nothing more than a kid. The one who _never_ raised his voice, or gave _any_ warning what so ever that he was upset until you were laying on the floor or the ground bleeding.

"I did it because the two of you were making a mess. Now shake hands and clean up this mess. We have too much work to do today to waste it fighting among ourselves." Throttle said as he picked his way across the room to the kitchen and opened the fridge and made a humming sound as he pulled out some orange juice and then pulled a glass from the cabinet over his head and poured himself a little bit as he went over the mental list of things to do.

They needed to finish cleaning the apartment over the garage, finish unpacking their things, figure out what they were going to do with the garage, get groceries- There was another crash behind him followed by some nasty sounding oaths that had him thinking that maybe they would have to find some new furniture for the dining room too as Modo and Vinny walked into the room carrying what was left of the food that they had fixed for breakfast, along with the dishes that they had broken while fighting.

They both dumped the stuff in the trash can and sighed. "Dining room's clean." Vinny said in a dull tone.

"So what are we doing today?"

"Groceries. Unpacking. Cleaning the apartment. We need to sit down and figure out what we're going to do with the garage-"

Modo got a funny look on his face and narrowed his one eye at their leader and growled. "There's nothing to figure out Throttle. The garage belongs to Charlie-girls family. We aren't doing anything to it or with it."

Throttle shook his head at Modo's tone. His bro misunderstood what he meant. "That wasn't what I meant. What I meant was, do we keep it open and earn some money working on some bikes or do we close it down?"

"Oh." Modo and Vinny both said in unison. Understanding dawning on them.

"We don't really need money, Charlie-girl had the habit of putting a_ lot_ back for emergency reasons in the cookie jar on top of the fridge." Vinny said as he pointed to said jar. Throttle and Modo both glanced at the jar.

It was true that they might not need money right now, but they would later on. In a few weeks if they weren't very careful. Plus now they had bills to pay and they needed to consider how to go about doing that. But they could probably do that a little later on. After they did everything else.

"Alright. So we don't need money right _now_, but we might later which is why we'll be cutting back on some things. We keep the electricity, the water, the heating and the air and spend only what is absolutely necessary on food and gas for our bikes. _Nothing more_. No junk food, no new movies, comics, or toys to amuse us. Do you guys understand?" Modo and Vinny both looked a little upset but agreed easily enough as Throttle leaned his body back a little bit against the counter next to the fridge and crossed his arms over his chest and wrapped his tail around his waist.

"And there's one more thing that I wanted to talk to you guys about-" The two mice stared at him with curious expressions on their faces as he continued to speak. "I've been thinking and I want us to learn more about the human anatomy."

"What for?" Vinny asked.

"Because I've been thinking over what happened to miss Charlie and how we all hesitated to touch her because we were worried about doing more harm-"

"Are you saying that if we had known more about the human anatomy that we might have been able to save Charlie-ma'am?" Modo asked, his one eye wide, his expression shocked. Throttle mentally went over the wounds that Charlie had suffered and slowly shook his head no.

"No. Miss Charlie's wounds were meant to shred organs and leave her alive just long enough to make her really suffer. Nothing we could have done _would_ have saved her. But that doesn't mean that the knowledge wouldn't be beneficial to us some where on down the line."

Vinny and Modo were both quiet for a second as his words sank in.

Throttle was right. The knowledge would be beneficial to them on down the line.

"Alright, we're in."

"Great. We'll stop by the local library on our way home from running errands and pick up a few documentaries, and books on it."


	3. Chapter 3

Later that day-

The garage was abuzz with activity. That afternoon when the mice returned from running their errands.

They had stopped by the local store and gotten groceries. They had stopped by the local library and checked out a few things. They had done everything _outside_ of the garage, and once they got back they knew that they would have to buckle down and finish the stuff that they had to do_ inside _their home to make it more presentable.

Throttle took the kitchen. Since neither of his bro's could or would work in the kitchen because of what had happened to Charlie girl, then Throttle had decided to take that area so that he could scrub up what was left of the blood (even though he logically knew that there wasn't any left to clean) and to repaint the kitchen cabinets that had been splattered with Charlie's blood. Which was why he and Vinny had dug out some things from the small shed behind the garage earlier.

The intention was to fix the area so that it looked like_ nothing_ had ever happened, and if that meant tearing out the cabinets and ripping up the tiles and redoing the entire area completely. Well, he'd do that if it would make his bro's more comfortable.

It took him an hour to scrub the floor before his back started hurting a little bit. Throttle made a small sound in the back of his throat as he listened to Modo and Vinny's really off key singing down the hall as he straitened his back and grabbed the bucket of lemon pledge water mix and stood up and made his way over to the sink and set the bucket down then went into the dining room and grabbed the plastic tarp and the bucket of mahogany paint on the table and used his tail to grab the paint brush and made his way back into the kitchen and set the paint and brush down so that he could spread the tarp.

Once that was done he was about to pull the top off of the paint when Vinny came walking up and stopped just outside of the kitchen area and wrinkled his nose a little bit. "What are you doing?"

"Painting." Throttle said as he popped the top off of the paint and dipped the brush in the dropped to one knee in front of the cabinets and started painting the blood spattered beige wood. Vinny watched him work for a second then looked around the kitchen, noting the color scheme of cream colored tiles, counters, and soft beige wood accented by pale yellow walls and curtains. Then he looked back at the dark stained mahogany wood that Throttle had just painted and cringed a little bit.

Oh man, if Charlie-girl had still been alive and saw her cabinets like this she would have tossed all of them out on their tails and forbidden them from _ever_ going inside her apartment again. "Uh bro, I don't think that the paint job is going to match the color scheme." Vinny said after a moment or two of uncomfortable silence. Throttle stopped in mid stroke and blinked at his bro as his shades slipped down his nose a little bit.

"What?" Throttle asked stupidly. Unsure of what Vinny was talking about.

"The color scheme Throttle. I don't think dark mahogany will match the yellow walls and cream colored counter tops and tiles." Vinny explained as Throttle pushed his shades back up into place and looked around the room, noting the cream colored tiles, counter tops, the pale yellow walls and curtains.

His tail twitched a little bit in agitation. Vinny was right. He didn't pretend to understand what his bro had just said to him, all he knew was that Vinny was right. "Uh..."

Vinny sighed and rolled his eyes. "Finish painting the wood and later on we'll get some paint for the walls that half ass match." Vinny said as he turned and walked away.

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It was six in the evening before the three finished cleaning, unpacking (and in Throttle's case painting). It had taken far longer than any of them had intended for it too to finish their chores, but in the long run, it was probably for the best since it kept them all busy. And kept their minds off of things.

After they each finished their chores they all sat down to relax a little bit before dinner and watched TV.

Vinny somehow managed to doze off with in the first ten minutes of the TV being turned on. Modo was eerily silent as they watched the show.

They sat in total silence for about two hours before Vinny woke himself up snoring and Throttle sighed and got up muttering something about going to fix their dinner. He dug a frozen pizza out of the freezer and started preheating the oven as he read the instructions on the box before digging out a flat pan to cook the pizza on.

Then pulled it out of the box and placing it on the pan and popping it into the oven before setting the timer and grabbing himself a root beer out of the fridge and leaned his back against the counter across from the oven to wait for their food to finish cooking.

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The next chapter will be longer I swear.

I'm sorry that the first chapter was so crappy.

It wasn't supposed to be, but death scenes aren't exactly my forte. Especially if I'm writing about something new. Chances are fairly good that I'll go back and re write it later on. But for now I just want to get this story started really well and see what happens.

Again this is my first BMFM fic, and for many of you who don't know me or haven't heard of me. Let me introduce myself.

My name is Babykitsune9. I love writing. And I love cartoons.

I have written over a hundred stories for Naruto, one for Supernatual, one for Heart no kunai Alice; or Alice in Clover field, one for TMNT's exct. I love reading just as much as I like writing and I enjoy testing my limits by coming up with all kinds of different stories.

So expect good things from me, and I'll break my back to deliver.

Until next time.


	4. Chapter 4

Shayera Shiloh Davidson got off of the bus with a small suit case in hand and looked around the deserted bus stop.

God it had been years since she had come back to Chicago for _any_ reason after her mother had sent her away. And if not for the circumstances, she might not have ever step foot in the windy city again, but as it is she didn't have much of a choice anymore.

Someone had killed her mother in cold blood for the sole purpose of drawing her out into the open again. She didn't completely know why, but she had some theories. None of them were very good theories, but at least she had _some_ ideas.

And those ideas would help her figure out who was responsible for her mother's death.

And in the long run, that was all that she cared about. She could work around everything else.

Including the favor that her mother had asked of her in her will. She had asked her to take care of her new friends. She had even explained the _reasons_ why Shay was asked to take care of them. It was because they were aliens. Not the illegal kind, but honest to god _green-blood-and-antenna-mind-walking_ aliens!

Shay might have scoffed at this and thought that her mother was certifiably nuts if not for the fact that she had sent actual pictures of the aliens that she had asked Shay to take care of along with detailed information about their diets, medical needs, allergies, likes and dislikes. And if she hadn't have talked to a few people who had actually met the aliens, she probably would have had her mom committed but after talking to some of the family who had met the three alien guys and knew them pretty well, Shay had finally, reluctantly (_very reluctantly_) agreed to do as her mother had asked.

She reached up and pulled her baseball hat off of her head and smoothed her long black hair back out of her face then put the hat back on and started walking. She had some alien guys to introduce herself too.

She walked the five blocks to the garage and stopped in front of it and looked at it. Absent mindedly noting that the sign had faded more than she recalled. There were dents in the metal doors to the garage that she didn't remember ever seeing, or making. There were some bricks laying on the side walk that looked as if they had come from the roof.

The building had been painted a different color, and some new beige bricks had been added to the back and sides.

It made her wonder if her mom had remodeled the place a little bit while she had been gone, or if those alien guys had been wrecking the place. The latter sort of upset her but there was nothing that she could do about it right now.

_Later._ She promised herself. Later she would find out and straiten things out. But first thing is first.

Introductions.

_God I hope that their friendly._ She thought nervously as she lifted her hand and lightly knocked on the wood door to the left of the garage and waited patiently for someone to answer.

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The martians had just sat down to eat and were arguing over how to cut the pizza when they heard a soft knock on the apartment door and froze. Three sets of eyes flickering to the clock on the wall to confirm the hour before they all frowned.

"Who do you think would come by at this hour?"

"Dunno. A lost tourist maybe."

Modo sighed and pushed himself back away from the table and stood. "We'll whoever they are, their being rude, bothering us at this hour of the night. I'll go see what they want..." Modo said as he walked out of the dining room and made his way to the front door.

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Shay shifted from one foot to another with a growing sense of apprehension as she heard heavy foot falls on the other side of the door an instant before the door opened a crack and she caught sight of a narrowed glowing red eye staring at her from between the door and the it's frame before she heard a soft humming sound and the door opened a little more and a giant, six foot five dark gray furred mouse wearing torn jeans, biker boots, a midnight blue breast plate, and one fingerless glove (good god in heaven his entire other arm was completely bionic!) stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of her.

"Ma'am?" The alien mouse said in a polite manner as he looked her over. Shay's heart leaped into her throat and she suddenly felt like forgetting her promise to her mother and running far,_ far_ away from this place and the intimidating, unnerving alien staring at her.

She swallowed convulsively for a second and finally managed a horrible, terrified squeaky, "Hi-" The mouse's ears twitched and he gave her a small knowing smile as if to say, _Yeah, I know that I'm scary, but once you get past that; I'm actually much, much worse._

"Hi." He said in the same polite tone, neither encouraging her nor discouraging her.

Shay mentally shook herself and smiled at him and tried again. "Hi-" Oh thank god she sounded normal again! "My name is Shayera and I was wondering-" The mouse tilted his head to the side a little bit and cut her off with a very cool tone.

"I'm sorry ma'am, but my bro's and I were just sitting down to dinner and it's rude to keep us waiting." Though the alien's tone never changed, Shay could detect the small bite to his tone and reacted automatically and flinched a little bit as a pink flush worked it's way across her pale cheeks.

"O-Oh. I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-" He gave her a bemused look as she stuttered a quick apology to him and then turned and excused herself after saying that she would come back at a more convenient time then quickly walked away.

Modo stood there watching the girl leave. He didn't want to move until he was sure that she was across the street and well on her way. He stood there for about fifteen minutes, watching her until she rounded the corner up the street and disappeared. He sighed and shook his head, feeling a little badly for treating the little wisp of a gal so coldly as he slipped back inside and gently closed the door behind him.


	5. Chapter 5

The next day the guys stopped by Charlie-girl's favorite diner for lunch after messing up Limberger's plans (for like the thousandth time in the past three months since coming to Earth) and parked their bikes close to the door and pulled off their helmets.

"Did you guys hear what old fish face was screaming at us when we left?" Vinny asked as he set his helmet aside. Modo shook his head no as Throttle sighed and ran his fingers through his semi long light brown hair.

He'd heard the fish.

He'd heard _everything_ that the alien had screamed at them while his office had gone up in flames. _I'll get you damn mice! I'll get you and gut you all like that little-_ Throttles mind cut off the threat there. There was no need for him to recall _all_ of Limberger's _exact_ words.

If he did, he might lose his temper and go back and kill the spineless fish once and for all. No. For the time being he'd play it cool and pretend that he hadn't heard anything at all.

"I didn't hear nothin'. Now, who's hungry?" Throttle asked as he set his helmet aside and stood up and wrapped his tail around his waist so that it wouldn't get in any ones way and started to the door of the diner, not bothering to see if his bro's were following him or not.

He didn't need to look to know that they were right behind him. The two were like him. None of them had eaten more than two or three _small_ bites of food in the past week since Charlie's funeral. And now after about a week of ignoring the needs of their bodies, they had the choice of of sitting down and actually_ eating_ something or letting their grief finally kill them.

He wanted food himself. His stomach had been cramping almost painfully for the past two days and the small amount of food that he had eaten had only seemed to make the feeling worse.

They walked into the diner and paused just inside the door and scanned the small crowd of people before finding a booth over in the corner of the diner and walked back and took a seat and looked through the set of menu's that had been left on the table and finally found what they wanted to order then set the menu's aside and waited for someone to come and take their order.

Ten minutes later old man Andy Williams, the guy who had been like a surrogate uncle to Charlie-girl, came walking up to the booth and looked them over. "Hey guys. How have you been?" Andy asked as he noted the dark circles under the youngest mouse's pink rimmed eyes before looking at the other two. Charlie-babe's boys didn't look so good. But then he hadn't exactly expected them too after the way that they had found their friend.

They all looked haggard, tired, and worn down. They were quieter too. A far cry from the playful and rambunctious guys that he had met three months ago.

It was painful to see them like this. But grief did funny things to people. Even people from another world.

He looked away from them and dug into his greasy apron and pulled out a a small note pad and a pen. "We're-" Throttle looked at his bro's, wondering what he could say. He'd be lying if he said that they were fine. And he had never liked lying no matter what the circumstances.

Luckily though, he didn't have to say anything. Vinny took over the conversation for him. "We're fine old man. What do you have in the kitchen to appeal to a growing boy?" Vinny asked in a light almost teasing tone.

There was no point in letting the elder worry about them now that Charlie was gone. Andy however was onto the younger alien and reached out and flicked Vinny on the nose sharply causing him to yelp, jump, and slap his hands over his nose and mouth as he stared at the elder with wide shocked eyes.

"It's not nice to lie to your elder boy. I know that things are hard now, but they will get better. Charlie-babe took steps to ensure that you would have the help and companionship that you-" Andy hadn't really been paying attention to what he was saying until he noticed the three aliens tense in their seats and look at him with expressions that bordered on predatory before he caught himself and quickly slapped his hands over his mouth as he mentally berated himself.

_Oh Andy boy, you've gone and made a mess now._ Charlie hadn't wanted her boys to know about her little girl until she was in town again to uphold her promise to take care of the three martians. She had felt that the guys would oppose Shay's presence in their lives if anything was to happen to her.

"Help?" Modo said quietly as Throttle and Vinny both frowned.

"Companionship?"

"What are you trying to tell us old man?"

"What isn't he telling us would be the better question, Vinny." Throttle said as he leveled an unnerving glare at the elderly human. All thoughts of food temporarily pushed was something about Andy's words that had set off warning bells in his mind. Just what had the old man meant when he had said that Charlie-girl had 'taken steps' to ensure that they had help and companionship?

Andy got a real nervous look on his face and coughed a few times as he muttered something inaudable under his breath as Vinny's tail snaked out and wrapped around the elder's middle as he scooted himself over until he was against the wall and pulled the elder into the seat next to him, causing Andy to sputter and glare at the younger alien as Vinny propped his elbow up on the table and settled his chin in his hand and gave him an amused smile.

The elder was lucky that Vinny hadn't forgotten how_ fragile_ elders were, cause if Andy had run, there was no doubt in Throttle's mind that the younger mouse _would_ have chased him down, tackled him and dragged him back to explain himself kicking and screaming.

"Now that your nice and comfortable Andy, tell us what you were talking about. What did Charlie-girl do? And what does it have to do with us having _help_ and _companionship_?"

Andy flushed red and stuttered. "I-I c-can't say." Because Charlie-babe would roll over in her grave if he told them anything before they had the chance to meet Shay.

"Whys that?" Modo asked curiously as he studied the elder.

Andy cleared his throat and tugged at the collar of his T-shirt. "I promised Charlie-babe that I wouldn't say anything."

"I think it's a little late for that Andy." Throttle pointed out.

Andy shook his head no and thought for a second. There had to be a way to_ tell _them without _actually_ coming out to tell them. Maybe he could use a word play or riddle. He thought for another second or so then perked up as an idea occurred to him. "Okay, okay. I can tell you something. But I won't be able to give you any totally strait answers. I have a promise to keep to Charlie-babe after all."

"Alright. Tell us." Throttle said as he propped himself up like Vinny and waited patiently as Andy dug out his wallet and started talking.

"There was a promise that a particular someone made to Charlie-babe, because she worried about you three and didn't want you to be alone if anything happened to her. This person is _very_ close to Charlie-girl. In fact Charlie-girl was the _only_ real family that this person had-"Andy pulled something small, like a wallet sized picture out of his wallet and set it down on the table for the three aliens to see.

It was a picture of a girl about sixteen or seventeen years of age, standing side by side with Charlie-girl. The two were smiling and had an arm slung around each others shoulders. The mice blinked and studied the picture, wondering where Andy was going with this.

The girl in the picture had long black hair, and emerald green eyes, an angelically beautiful face, and a mischievous smile that looked exactly like Charlie's.

"This person was asked to come to Chicago in the unlikely event of Charlie-babes death, to run her garage and do a _few_ other things-" Andy said as he tapped the corner of the picture above the girl's head. "Which is why if you ever see this person, don't let her out of your sight for any reason. Charlie-babe would never forgive us if she got hurt."

Modo picked up the picture and looked at Andy for a second before asking, "Was this person close to Charlie-ma'am?"

Andy gave them an enigmatic smile and replied. "As close as a _parent_ is to their _child_."

Throttles ears twitched a little bit as his eyes narrowed a little bit behind his shades as Modo handed him the picture. He slipped the photo in his inner vest pocket and leaned back in his seat. "Is there anything else that we need to know Andy?"

"No. Not that I can think of."

"Alright, thanks then."


	6. Chapter 6

Shay stood in the kitchen of her mother's home staring at the newly painted cabinets as she went over the police file that had pilfered from a friend at the local police station. The pictures of the crime scene were heart wrenching. And nauseating at the same time.

There was such _rage_ and_ maliciousness_ in the way that her mother had been attacked.

She sighed and closed the file and set it down on the counter top, unsure if she would be able to keep a level head if she kept looking at the nightmare worthy gore and stepped into the small area to finish what she had come to the garage to do.

She had been in the apartment for about three hours now, studying the crime scene photos and washing the alien guy's clothes, folding them, washing the dishes, and making something for the guys to eat.

She doubted that they would appreciate having a stranger in the apartment. She even knew that they might become hostile, but she hadn't been able to totally concentrate on the file that she had brought and had done the chores so that she could take a small break and think things over.

So far she was coming up with a lot of blanks.

She didn't know anyone outside of the local psychopaths who were even capable of doing something like this. But one thing was painfully clear. Whoever had killed her mother had held a _grudge_ against her.

Which meant that they somehow knew her mother.

She sighed again. God when her mom got into trouble; she never did it half assed.

Shay moved over to the stove and switched off the eyes that she had been using to make grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, chicken and vegetable soup. She grabbed a few plates and bowls and fixed the food, making sure that there was enough for left overs just in case the guys wanted seconds and set them all aside on the opposite counter and put the rest in the fridge and then put the pan, and the soup pot in the sink and ran water over them until it was safe to pick them up and clean them then set them in the dish rack and wiped her hands on the dish towel next to the sink.

After that she grabbed the file and meandered down the hall to her mother's room and picked up the picture of her that she wanted and pulled it out of the frame and stuffed it into the file and then decided that it was time to go.

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The guys were on their way back to the garage when they had to stop at a traffic light and Vinny once again, for the hundredth time in so many minutes since they had left the diner, flipped up his viz-er and used his tail to tap Throttle on the shoulder.

Throttle sighed and flipped his viz-er up and turned his head to glare at his young friend. "What is it Vinny?" He asked in an irritated tone.

"What did Andy mean when he said that Charlie-girl and that kid were as close as a parent and child?" Throttle sighed and felt the beginnings of a headache forming behind his eyes as he tried to think of a way to answer Vinny's question. But after a second or so shook his head and flipped his viz-er back down. He had to admit for someone missing some brain cells, Vinny asked some damn good questions sometimes.

"I don't know." He said as the light turned green and they started riding again. Ten minutes later they pulled up to the garage and parked their bikes for a second as Modo went inside to open the garage doors and came back out an instant later with a dark look on his face.

"What's wrong Modo?" Vinny asked curiously as he pulled his helmet off.

"You guys need to come in and see this." Modo said in an angry voice. Throttle and Vinny both looked at each other for a second then climbed off of their bikes and followed Modo inside and right to the kitchen counter where the food was.

Throttle stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the food for a second, his mind trying to process what he was seeing when Vinny reached out and held his hand over one of the bowls and made a growling sound as he looked at Modo and Throttle and hissed, "Food's still hot."

"We didn't pass anyone on the way here did we?" Throttle asked. Modo and Vinny shook their heads. "Then whoever came into our home must have went out-" Modo and Vinny were on their way out the back door before he even finished his sentence. Leaving him staring after them for a second before he turned around and walked back out to his bike and climbed back on and started it again.

If there were any suspicious people around, they'd chase them down and find out what they were doing in_ their_ home.

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Shay had the funniest feeling that she was being followed. Yet every time she turned her head to look behind her, there was _no one_ there. _Maybe I'm just being paranoid._ She thought as she rubbed the nape of her neck where the fine hairs were standing up on end as she looked down the street in the direction she had come.

Yet that nagging feeling of eyes boring into her, didn't go away. She blinked and shook her head then started walking again as she heard the faint purr of a motorcycle from a distance. Thinking nothing of it she pulled out the file again and flipped it open so that she could look at the picture of her mother that she had taken.

The picture of her mother had been taken a month after Shay had been born, and Charlene had been in good spirits. She had slimmed down, she was healthy, her baby was healthy. And she positively glowed with a mother's pride. Shay could see it in her smile.

This was how she wanted to remember her mother-

Alive, and healthy, and vibrantly beautiful.

Not cold and blue and dead.

She felt the familiar prickling sting of tears as she ran her finger tips along the face in the picture, her mind shutting out everything else. Ignoring the feeling of being followed, shutting out the loud sound of the motorcycle as it closed in on her.

She put the picture back into the file as tears slipped down her face. She lifted a hand to wipe them away and nearly jumped out of her skin when a motorcycle pulled up beside her and a man in a funky shaped helmet stopped her. "Excuse me ma'am."

Shay turned her head and looked at him, her expression startled. "Y-Yes." She said automatically as she looked him over. She couldn't see much of his face. But if his body was anything to go by, he was a handsome devil.

Throttle stared at the startled expression of the girl from the picture that Andy had given them. He had expected her to still be a kid, not a grown woman.

Her dark hair hung down to the middle of her back in soft wispy curls, her bangs falling in her eyes (they looked so much darker up close, emerald rimmed by teal) and so startlingly clear. So innocent looking that he felt himself suck in a breath.

Goddess, when was the last time that someone with such innocent eyes had ever looked at him? He wondered as he looked her over.

She was beautiful. Stunningly, hauntingly; _enchantingly_ beautiful. And not just her face or her eyes.

The rest of her was beautiful too. She was about five foot six inches, her build was delicate, petite, with lush curves. Her clothes were a simple faded blue pair of jeans and a mint green colored shirt and a silver and white belt hung a little low around her hips and her shoes were flat soled white sneakers.

He curled his hands around the handle bars of his bike until his hands felt like they were burning. He wanted to touch her. It was shocking to him that he wanted to touch her, yet at the same time it wasn't very shocking at all. It was simply a part of his nature to want to touch _something_, or _someone_ so beautiful.

If they had been back home on mars, he would have taken her back to his home and kept her there. Coveted her for her beauty. Just like any other martian would have regardless of their gender. _Behave yourself Throttle. Your here for a reason._ His mind hissed at him as he mentally shook himself and cleared his throat. "Could you tell me where the Last Chance Garage is?" He asked in a mock curious tone.

The woman blinked at him and then turned a little bit and started to point down the street when it occurred to her that this guy was putting her on or something. Anyone with eyes would have seen the garage on their way up this side of the street. Which meant that this guy was up to something that could be possibly dangerous to her health.

"I-I'm sorry but I honestly couldn't say. I'm not from around here-" She said as she took a small, subtle step back away from the man.

Throttle narrowed his eyes at her behind his viz-er and shades. Uh-oh. She was on to him. He hadn't expected her to catch onto him so soon, he had at least thought that he would get to exchange words with her a little more before he ended up scaring the hell out of her.

"Oh. Well then. How about going out for a burger or something?" He asked, trying to appear harmless through some innocent flirting. Apparently that was the wrong way to go, because she paled and gave him a terrified look that she quickly tried to mask while she shook her head no and stuttered out a polite 'no thank you' as she backed away from him a little more.

Throttle sighed and lifted his hand to rub at his helmet, signaling Vinny and Modo to close in before she got spooked enough to run.

Shay kept her eyes on the man, her self preservation instinct was suddenly screaming that it wouldn't be safe for her to do other wise as she took another step back-and ran right into a hard muscled body as strong arms closed around her, trapping her in place while something wrapped around her body, trapping her arms and legs, throwing her slightly off balance an instant before she was picked up.

She let out a frightened scream, and dropped the file that she had been holding as she thrashed around and tried to free herself before a hand covered her mouth, muffling her screams.


	7. Chapter 7

Shay doubted that she had ever been so scared before in her life as she was now as she thrashed and tried to scream as she was handed off to the guy on the motorcycle and quickly bound by something else as the other binding fell away and she was pulled back against the cycler's chest. One of his arms wrapped around her slender waist, his hand settled on her stomach, the fingers splayed wide as one of his friends put a helmet on her before she could scream again.

She shivered as a chill worked it's way down her spine as her stomach got a weird fluttering sensation as she caught sight of the giant gray furred mouse bending down to pick up the file that she had dropped while the other guy picked up the pictures. "Meet me back at the garage in ten." The guy behind her said as he turned his bike around in a sudden swerving motion that had her subconsciously pressing herself back against him a bit more to keep herself from falling off.

Even though she logically knew that this guy wouldn't let her fall off. His grip was too strong.

No, he intended to hold her in place until he got where he was going. And then...well she didn't know what he was planning. So she would just have to wait and see.

Throttle's mind was mercifully blank on the short trip back to the garage where he parked his bike on the side walk, ignoring the startled squeaking sound that escaped the woman as he turned off the bike and reached up with his free hand and pulled off his helmet and set it aside before reaching for his captive's helmet and gently unfastened it and tugged it off of her, and put his hand over her mouth just in case she decided to scream.

And stared down at her for a second before using his tail to lift her up a little bit and slipped his other arm under her legs and walked over to the apartment door and slipped inside and made his way to the living room and set her down on the couch and then removed his hand and was a little surprised when she said. "Oh. Your one of the alien guys."

She sounded like she was in shock. "You know about us?" He asked as he gave her a calculating look. She nodded her head a little bit, her eyes wide as he got in her personal space and smoothed her dark hair back from her face with one of his hands before he seemed to catch himself, scowled a little bit, and moved away from her as the sounds of two voices reached their ears from somewhere in the back.

"Throttle!"

The alien looked at her for a second then called out, "Yeah, we're in the living room." A second or so before the gray mouse appeared in the door way carrying the file. He stopped for a second and glanced in her direction before moving out of the way and letting the guy behind him walk into the room.

Shay blinked and looked from one mouse to another in utter disbelief. Dear god in heaven, what did the martians feed these guys to make them so big? She wondered as the white furred alien looked at her and gave a low whistle of appreciation and walked over to the coffee table in front of the couch and sat down directly in front of her and said in a soft tone. "Well aren't you a little darlin'."

Shay looked at him like he was nuts and said nothing as the gray furred mouse handed the file to 'Throttle' who flipped it open and looked through it for a second before shutting it and looking at her.

"What are you doing with a police file on what happened to Charlie-girl?" He asked in a low tone as he motioned for the snowy furred guy to move and set the file down on the coffee table where his friend had been sitting a second before.

Shay looked at the file for a second, her fingers curling and uncurling subconsciously at her sides. The only obvious sign that she wanted the file back in her hands. Throttle waited patiently for her to answer him, and glanced at Vinny and Modo who were both standing just to his left against the living room wall, waiting for the girl to answer the question when Throttle decided to try a different question since she obviously felt no need to answer him about the file.

"Okay. So you don't want to answer me about the file. That's cool. We got all day. So lets try another question. What's your name darlin'?"

Shay chewed on her lower lip for a second, her expression wary. "Shay." She said in a very soft nearly inaudible voice. Throttle smiled at her and she quickly looked away, needing to look at something other than him as her heart fluttered in her chest. The adrenaline from a little while ago was wearing off and calm, cool logic was taking it's place as she recalled all of the things that her mother had told her about these three.

From what she had understood of things, they were very polite, very calm and level headed and had a real tendancy towards acting like gentlemen towards the fairer sex, so she wasn't sure if she had any real reason to fear them. Even though they had pretty much grabbed her off of the streets and scared the ever living hell out of her. None of them had _hurt_ her.

They just _seemed_ to want to have questions and wanted to talk. Nothing more.

"Shay what?"

"Shayera Shiloh Davidson."

Throttle's ears twitched as he looked at his bro's both of whom looked a little shell shocked as Modo rasped. "Your related to Charlie-ma'am?"

"I didn't know that she had a younger sister." Vinny said in a shocked tone. Shay turned her head a little bit and hissed at him.

"I'm not her sister."

"Her cousin then?"

"No!" Shay ground out from between clenched teeth before growling. "I'm her daughter."


	8. Chapter 8

They stared at her with identical expressions of shock, disbelief and curiosity as the gray furred mouse stuttered out in a scandalized tone as his mind came crashing to a near total stop. "C-Charlie? _O-Our_ Charlie? Had a k-k-k-i-id?"

"_Dammit_, Vinny do something with Modo. His mind's gone away for the moment." Throttle growled as he mentally shook himself out of his own slightly shocked thoughts and sat down on the coffee table so that he wouldn't fall down (just in case the lovely little human decided to drop another bomb on him) and folded his arms over his chest and looked at the girl who had introduced herself as Shayera Shiloh Davidson with a thoughtful look on his face as he mulled some stuff over.

Vinny-was apparently the white furred guy because he's the one that grabbed the giant gray one and carefully maneuvered him out of the room while whispering to him. "It's okay big guy. Miss Charlie probably would have told us-"_ If we had even bothered to ask._ Vinny thought as he half carried half dragged his bro out of the room and into the dining room and pulled out a chair for him. Leaving Throttle and the girl alone in the living room.

Shay stared after the other two with a slight sense of panic and apprehension. She couldn't help but think that this was the part where one of the 'nice' furry alien was going to crack open her skull and modify her brain. Or eat some of it and make her their slave or something.

It was absurd. And stupid.

And she had definately been watching _way _too many Sci-Fi monster movies if she believed that crap.

But she couldn't help herself. This was a very unusual situation and her mind was running amok with all sorts of frightening things from probes to mini microchips being implanted under the skin and in the organs-

She felt a little bit of hysteria bubble up in her chest, causing her heart to thud against her chest and her breathing to become a little erratic. Throttle noticed the change in her, his ears picking up the frantic beating of her heart, and he shifted a little bit in his place on the coffee table and reached out and put his hand against the curve of her cheek and leaned forward a little bit and made a soft shushing sound as he ran his thumb back and forth across her skin in a soothing motion.

He wasn't sure why he did it, he hadn't even been aware that he had done something until he was running his thumb across her skin in a feather light caress. The action startled him slightly and made him pull back after a second or so before saying in a raspy tone. "Don't be scared."

Shay looked at him with a slightly panicked expression on her pretty face. "I can't help it." She said in a whispered tone as she looked away. He made a humming sound then asked.

"What are you afraid I'll do?" He could only imagine what was going on in her mind at the moment. He'd seen enough B-rated alien movies to know that they were depicted as monsters. And even though that was mostly true, there was always an exception.

Which was why it bugged him to have her freaking out right now.

Shay wasn't sure how to answer him. She wasn't sure if she _should_ answer him. She had too many gory alien movie scenes running through her mind at the moment. He shifted again and the bindings that had been holding her fell away-

No that wasn't right. The bindings moved. _Slithered_ or _snaked_ out from around her causing her to jump and make a frightened sound in the back of her throat and scrambled over the back of the chair and looked at him through wide eyes as he wrapped his tail around his waist. "Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you further little darlin'..." No, he had just wanted to let her go so that she could move around if she felt the need.

It was his round about way of comforting her without touching her again. His fingers curled against his arms in longing but he ruthlessly squashed it, and pushed that longing to the back of his mind so that he could examine it more closely later on.

"That was your tail."

"Yes."

"Why would you use your tail to bind someone?"

Throttle gave her an amused look and shrugged his shoulders. "It's stronger than rope and chain." And a _very_ effective tool when you wanted to snap someones neck or strangle them. Which was the most common way of disposing of ones enemy's on Mars. But she didn't need to know that, and he certainly wasn't going to tell her that any more than he had ever told Charlie-girl.

Shay gave him an 'Oh' look and his lips twitched in amusement for a second before saying. "Charlie never mentioned you to us."

"She didn't really like talking about her personal life." Shay said honestly. Throttle nodded his head slightly. He could understand that Charlie-girl might not talk about her personal life, but that left him and his bro's with a lot of unanswered questions. Including the ones about her death.

He picked up the file and held it up for her to see and tapped it with his index finger. "The reason that you have this- It's to investigate her death isn't it?"

Shay didn't say anything, she just looked at the file then at him, and chewed on her bottom lip a little bit. Throttle sighed and set the file back down and said very calmly, despite the irritation he was starting to feel. "Look, if your being honest with us about her being your mother then it's understandable that you would want to investigate her death. However, the nature of her demise it isn't something that you should look into alone. You might get hurt-"

_Or you might get yourself killed._ Throttle thought as he looked her over and felt his heart do a strange lurching sensation in his chest at the thought of this pretty little human dying in the same horrible fashion as Charlie-girl.

"Leave the investigating to us-" He finally said after a moment or so and smiled a little bit when she looked like she was going to argue with him. But stopped herself. "We'll find the one who hurt Charlie and do something about them. In the mean time if you have any leads you should tell me about them."

Shay thinned her lips for a second in irritation as her temper spiked a little bit. This _fuzzy-butted-overgrown-rodent_ wanted her to give up the investigation! To him and his friends.

_Never!_ Her mind howled in outrage.

She was never going to give up. Not until the person responsible for killing her mother was off the streets and behind bars or laying face down in a ditch somewhere. Those were the _only_ two reasons that she would ever stop looking.

Throttle waited for her to say something, saw the flash of anger in those pretty eyes of hers before she made a tsking sound and said, "I haven't got any leads." He knew that she was lying to him, also knew that having him tell her to back off and leave the investigating to him and his bro's upset her. But he had a point.

And since she wasn't feeling very much like sharing then they would have to watch her._ Closely. _

_"_Alright. Will you tell me how you knew about me and my bro's? Did Charlie-girl tell you about us? And if so, what did she say?"

_"_Well assuming that you guys never read the copy of her will-"

"Will?"

"It's a written record of what a sick or dying or dead person wanted done with their things and such. Since she said nothing to you outright she might have mentioned me and why I'm here in her will. I know that she left a copy of it in an envelope with your names on it somewhere around here."

"Do you know where?"

"No not really, but I can safely assume that she might have either left it in the safe in the garage or in the cookie jar on top of the fridge-" Throttle tilted his head to the side and studied her for a second sensing that there was a reason why she believed the Will to be in one of those places and wanting to ask her to explain, badly as she continued speaking. "Those were often times the best places to hide my school report cards." He blinked behind his shades. That hadn't been the explanation that he had expected, but well, he'd seen how humans react to bad school grades from their young.

So enough said.

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Modo jumped a little bit when he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned his head to look at his younger brother as Vinny set an open bottle of root beer down on front of him. "You okay man?"

"I-I don't k-know." Modo stuttered as he grabbed the root beer bottle and slowly started to peel off the paper label. His mind still reeling in a suspended state of shock. He couldn't seem to get past the mere idea that little Charlene Davidson had had a kid, and never told them.

It hurt to think that even though she had allowed them to live with her and be a part of her life, that she hadn't seemed to trust them enough to share the _joy_ of being a parent.

Hadn't they told her once that children were incredible rare on their planet?

They would have loved to know about Charlie-girls kid if she had thought to share the information with them. They would have wanted to meet her kid and be a part of it's life. They probably even would have insisted on the kid coming home to stay with them so that they could protect her too.

"Do you think that girl was telling the truth? About being Charlie-babe's kid, I mean." Vinny asked all of a sudden. Modo looked at him for a second and mentally went over what he knew about Charlie-girl, then coupled that little bit of knowledge with what he had read in one of the books that they had checked out form the library to learn about the human anatomy.

1) Charlie-girl had been thirty eight. Close to thirty nine years old.

2) She'd had wide hips and a full figure.

She had been prime for breeding and may have had a child already when she was younger. So it wasn't totally impossible for her to have had a grown kid since humans aged a little faster than they did. It might also sort of explain why the girl had been strangely absent from Charlie's side.

They had found out shortly after coming to earth that human children often left home very young to become more independent. Some parents felt that sending their children away was the best way to teach them to be self reliant and more able to take care of themselves further on in the future.

It was also a way to prepare them for someday having families and children of their own.

"It's not impossible. Charlie would have to have been in her late teens or early twenties." Modo said as he took a drink of his root beer.

"Okay. I can accept the possibility-" Vinny said as he propped his chin up on his hand. "But wouldn't there have been proof? A record or pictures? A home movie or two?"

Modo's ears twitched a little bit as he thought. "Probably. Miss Charlie, might have put those things up somewhere. I just can't figure out why she would do that though." Modo said said as he finished peeling the last of the paper label off of his drink when Vinny said something that made a lot more sense to him than anything else since Charlie-girl's death.

"You know how you get around your nephew? That whole, the-kid-is-mine-and-if-you-come-between-us-I-will-kill-you, way that you get when you finally have some time to spend with him. Maybe Charlie-girl was the same way about her kid. Maybe she felt that the fact that she had a kid was_ one_ of the few things that she _shouldn't_ have to share."

Modo blinked at him and was about to say something when they both heard Throttle call out to them. "Vinny! Modo! I need one of you to check the cookie jar for an envelope with our names on it!"

"What for?" Vinny called back and they both cringed when Throttle bellowed something in their native language that sounded strangely like, _"Do it or I'm going to light you up like a lava pit." _

Vinny looked at Modo and shrugged his shoulders as he pushed back from the table and stood up. "Yes sir! I'd like to keep my fur, sir!" Vinny called back, trying to test and see if Throttle was being serious and nearly tripped over his own feet when an alarmingly_ loud_ and _frightening_ growl reached his ears, causing both him and Modo to race each other for the kitchen before Throttle came after them.


	9. Chapter 9

Throttle turned away from the door and looked at Shay, and noted the paleness of her face and the slight shaking of her body as she stared at his wide eyed. "Scared?" He asked in a soft tone. Shay looked like she wanted to shake her head or something but instead rasped.

"Terrified." She'd never heard such a loud and frightening sound before.

She was so frightened that she was sure that her legs would have buckled on her if she hadn't have been holding onto the couch. Throttle sighed and moved around the couch to her side and gently pried her fingers from the back of the chair and then slipped an arm around her and pulled her against him and held her while she stood there shaking while he tried to apologise to her.

"I'm sorry for scaring you. But sometimes it's the only way to get the other two to do what I want."

"No. It's fine. I get it." Shay said as she felt his hand rub along her spine, causing her to shiver and bury her face against his vest. And she did get it. Her mother had often used such intimidation tactics on her when she had wanted her to clean up her room or study more in school.

Throttle's heart slammed against his ribs the way it had earlier when he had first seen her on the street. His reaction to her closeness was strange, even to him. And if he didn't know any better he would think that he was _enthralled_ by her the way his people became enthralled by their destined mate. But that couldn't be happening to him since he was on an alien planet, far, far away from his own kind. Which was why he pushed the very idea aside and tried to forget about it.

Shay's body slowly seemed to stop shaking as he rubbed her back and after a while he reluctantly let her go and stepped back away from her. "Better now?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

"No problem. Now come on. I'm going to put you in the dining room while I go check the safe in the garage to see if the Will is in there. And if it isn't then maybe your birth record is-" Shay opened her mouth to say something to him, her expression telling him that she was just a little offended that he didn't believe her as he continued to speak. "Far be it for me to call a lady a liar, but there are a lot of sickos in the world and my bro's and I would feel better about having you around if we could confirm that you are who you say you are." He pointed out gently.

Shay chewed her bottom lip for a second then said in a mean tone that made him blink and take a small step back from her in suprise. "Alright. But once you find what you need too to confirm who I am, I'm going to kick you three times in the shin for not believing me. It could happen today. Or a month from now. And I won't warn you ahead of time."

"Yeah...alright..." He said nervously as she brushed past him and out of the room leaving him alone for a second to run his fingers through his semi long hair and shake his head. Oh hell. He'd messed up just now hadn't he?

He sighed and turned on his heel and walked out of the living room and headed to the dining room and paused when he heard Shay talking to Modo.

"Can you get it out?" Shay asked as she grasped the cookie jar that the alien mouse had apparently gotten his robotic hand stuck in and studied it for a second before frowning.

"N-No ma'am. I don't think I can." Modo said. His expression embarrassed.

"Can you at least move your fingers?"

Modo tried to do as she asked and could only get his fingers to flex so far in the small jar before he had to close his hand again. "Not really." He said after a second as the girl gripped the edge around the top of the jar and tugged on it experimentally. The jar didn't move.

Shay made a humming sound and shifted her hold on the jar and glanced up at him for a second. "I'm going to try giving this thing a nice pull, when I say 'now' straiten your fingers as best as you can." Modo blinked and nodded his head as Vinny moved to stand behind Shay just in case she somehow managed to get the jar off and fell back.

He didn't want her to hurt herself hitting the jagged counter corner. She could easily damage her organs that way.

Throttle moved to stand in the door way to the kitchen and watched the scene curiously, waiting to see what happened as she said 'now' and gave the jar a quick jerk and staggered back a little bit and gave a startled shriek when the jar came off and she fall back against Vinny who caught her and wrapped an arm around her slender waist and held her upright as Modo flexed his fingers and grinned.

"I'm free!"

"It's a good thing. I thought we were going to have to take your arm off." Vinny said in a teasing tone before Shay growled.

"Dammit! This cookie jar is one day going to be the death of someone!" Both Vinny and Modo looked at her with startled expressions on their faces as she reached in and pulled out a folded letter, and a wad of money and and set them down on the counter violently before walking over to the trash can and tossing the jar in the trash. She looked over at Throttle and pointed to the folded letter and said.

"There is the will. The combination on the safe is thirteen, thirty one, twenty two. Have fun." And with that she grabbed one of the grill cheese and ham sandwiches that she had made earlier and she walked past him into the dining room and sat down and made a huffing sound as she took a bite.


	10. Chapter 10

Twenty minutes later Throttle was back in the dining room with his bro's and the girl, a look of total shock on his face as he sat down and placed the birth certificate on the table in front of Shay where his bro's could see it along with the few old pictures of Charlie-girl and her baby.

"Goddess..." Vinny breathed as he looked over the birth certificate and the baby pictures. Modo blinked rapidly and made a funny sound before hanging his head and rubbing his one eye in an effort not to cry.

"Okay. You were telling the truth-" Throttle said after a moment or two of trying to collect his thoughts. He wasn't exactly sure how to react to this little bit of information. Sure he knew that there was like a fifty percent chance of Shay actually being Charlies kid. Just like there had been a fifty percent chance of her just being some sicko wanting to prey on their grief. But the fact that he had the confirmation just drove the point home that their human friend had been keeping secrets from them.

And now that they knew that, there was a damn good chance that _whatever_ secrets she had been keeping may have had a hand in _why_ she had been killed.

It was a sobering thought that left him a little speechless.

"Now before I read this Will thingy that your mother left for us, is there anything that we should know? Why she kept a Will? What else she may have been hiding?"

Shay mulled over his questions for a few minutes before sighing and leaning back in her chair and saying. "Mom wrote out her Will about a month after you guys showed up. It was because of when she was nearly crushed by those metal beams while trying to help you. She wanted to make sure that if anything happened to her, that you guys didn't feel like it was your fault and decide to go do something stupid and reckless. She worried about you, ya know-" The three nodded their heads in understanding.

"Anyways, she got so worried about you three that she started agonizing over things and asking herself stuff like, 'If anything ever happened to me, who would do this? Who would pay the bills, work on the bikes, and just be there for the three of you in general if something happened?' She agonized over it for so long that she started to make a list of names."

Shay paused for a second and sighed before continuing. "Of the people that she knew she could _depend_ on and _trust_ to take her place. The list had a grand total of five people. Old man Andy Williams, he was crossed off of the list because he has health issues. My Uncle Izzy, is a single father with two small kids and couldn't afford to do much. It would have put him and his kids in danger."

"My Grandpa and Grandma, both of whom are now dead and can't be of any assistance what so ever to anyone. And then there is me. I was ideal for what mom had in mind for several reasons, 1) She knew that if anything happened to her, I'd come home and stay to run the garage. 2) I'm unattached. I have no boyfriend, no interest in settling down, no kids. 3) No health problems. Which is pretty convenient since my body won't give out at a moments notice if things get dicey. 4) I'm as good with machines as my mom. I can fix your bikes. I can design and build you new ones and even program a new AI program for them if need be. And last of all 5) I took classes in Jr. High and High School on how to administer first aid. So if you guys come back I can take care of you easily."

"So she started calling me and asked me if I would mind watching out for you three and helping keep you out of trouble. And to my knowledge that is everything that I was asked to do. I'm not at liberty to say what else she may have been hiding, because she didn't tell me much that _could_ be considered troubling enough to get her killed."

"I see." Was all Throttle said as he sighed and sat back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest when Vinny asked.

"Then your back in town for good?"

"Yeah."

"Where have you been staying?"

Shay looked at him and flushed a little bit. "A hotel."

"Which one?"

"The one two blocks from here."

"What room number?"

Shay frowned and hesitated for a second before answering. "Seven." No sooner than the words left her mouth than the white furred alien held his hand out and said in a tone that brooked no argument.

"Gimme the key sweetheart. There's no way in hell that I'm letting you go back to that place when you can just stay here." He said evenly as he waited for her to give him the key. Shay didn't move. She did however get a funny expression on her face before rasping out a shocked sounding-

"W-What?"

"You heard me, baby girl. _Your staying here_." Vinny said as he wiggled his fingers in front of her face to remind her that she still hadn't give him the hotel key. Shay looked at him for a second before looking at the other two who were quietly waiting for something.

For her to turn the invitation down? To take them up on it? She didn't know. All she knew was that he was trying to _order_ her into staying by telling her that she wasn't leaving. She pushed her chair back away from the table and stood up. All three aliens tracked her movements with their eyes.

"First of all. I'm not a baby nor am I a girl. Second of all, I'm not staying here. And I don't appreciate you telling me that I'm not leaving when I am." The three aliens just looked at her, their expression never changing. Never betraying any sense of anger or hurt. Which was probably why she was so surprised when she heard Vinny sigh and say very quietly after she walked around the table and started past them towards the front door down the hallway.

"Well, I did try to tell you-" An instant later she felt a hand grasp her shoulder while another slipped under her hair and paused at her nape and she felt a strange almost _electric _sensation pass over her skin and felt her legs buckle as everything went dark and she fell.

The last thing that she was vaguely aware of was Vinny saying, "_What I meant to say if you had given me the chance was that you shouldn't leave. For your own protection it would be best if you stayed here with us. But this works too-" _


	11. Chapter 11

Throttle shook his head at Vinny's_ incredibly_ stupid move, yet said nothing to the youngest of his bros because he knew that the martian _had_ a valid point about why Shay should stay with them since they could protect her. Still that was no excuse for what Vinny had done to the girl. Nor did it excuse him from going through her pockets until he found the key to her hotel room before handing her off to Modo.

"I'm going to go collect baby girl's things. Do me a favor and put sweetheart to bed so that she can sleep a little more comfortably." Vinny said as he pocketed the key. Modo had a slightly panicked look on his face as he held Shay up. Her body was so loose in her unconsious state that her spine bent back over his arm at an almost _unnatural_ and _painful_ looking angle. Her face was pale, her breathing was just a little bit too shallow to be deemed healthy.

And Throttle couldn't help but think that someone would be losing sleep tonight just to make sure that she didn't stop breathing. "Vinny, just how much of a shock did you give her?"

The white martian looked over at Shay and did a quick calculation in his head. He hadn't used a very big shock. In fact he had used the lowest that he could think of so that he wouldn't end up doing irreparable damage to Shay's organs and nervous system. The shock itself had only been meant to knock her out. Not jeopardize her health. "Not much."

"I can't tell if she's breathing-" Modo said in a worried tone as he tried to fix the awkward angle that her body was in so that she wouldn't wake up in pain.

Vinny gave him a dirty look, silently promising retaliation. "She's breathing. I can see the rise and fall of her chest from here. Just put her to bed and let her sleep off the effects. I'll be back in a little bit with her things."

Modo opened his mouth to snap at the younger alien but Vinny started walking, completely ignoring the fact that his elder had been about to say something to him as Throttle got up out of his seat and carefully took Shay from the older alien and told him to go chase Vinny down and keep him out of trouble. Modo nodded and ran out of the room, leaving Throttle alone with their late friends daughter.

He sighed and shifted his hold on her so that he had her cradled against his chest and walked down the hall to her mother's room and opened the door and walked inside and laid her on the bed and pulled her shoes off before walking over to the closet across the room and pulling out a thick blanket and using it to cover her before he walked back out of the room so that she could sleep in peace for the moment.

Yet made the mental note to come back to check on her later on. After he and his brothers talked about what they were going to do with her.

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Throttle was sitting at the dining room table eating a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and looking over Charlie's will when Vinny and Modo finally got back from their little errand. "I can't believe you ran me off of the road!" Vinny growled at Modo. His voice loud and tinged with outrage as they walked through the front door.

Modo laughed at the younger alien and took the small slate gray suit case from him. "I can't believe that you didn't _expect_ me to run you off of the road." Modo said with a bemused smile on his face was they both walked through the door to the dining room and stopped when Throttle turned around in his seat to look at them for a second before Vinny pushed Modo slightly and said nervously.

"He started it." Modo elbowed him in the ribs then went still as Throttle's shades slipped down his nose a little bit, revealing unamused scarlet eyes.

"Did you get little-darlin's things?" Vinny and Modo both nodded their heads as Modo held up the suit case and frowned.

"She didn't bring much with her in the way of clothes. Just a pair of pants, two shirts, a pair of shorts and a dress." Throttle was quiet for a second before pushing his shades back up into place.

"What about her...under things?" He asked, hoping that the two hadn't forgotten to get all of Shayera's things, yet hadn't wanted to refer to the clothing she wore under her normal clothing in any embarrassing way out of respect for the girl herself.

Modo and Vinny were quiet for a second. Both frowning. They hadn't seen any _under thing_ clothes. But then they hadn't really paid attention to anything aside from the unusual way some of the clothes had been laid out on the bed when they had entered the room.

"We didn't see any under things laying around so maybe their in the case already."

Throttle made a humming sound but didn't say anything. He couldn't really blame them for not noticing if they had _those_ or not. They were gentlemen after all.

"Maybe. Come and sit down guys. We need to talk about what to do now." Throttle said as he turned back around in his seat so that he was facing the table again as his bros pulled up a couple of chairs.

"Okay. Whats on your mind?" Modo asked curiously as Throttle pushed the will to the middle of the table and leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest. He had been over the will nine times already and didn't really know what to make of it.

There were so many stipulations and scenarios that he was starting to think that Charlie hadn't been in her right mind when she had had this thing done. She came across as someone who was _increadably_ paranoid about the 'what if's' in life among other things. But even so, Charlie had planned for everything. Down to the last little detail.

"First off, Vinny had a point earlier. We can't let little darlin' stay somewhere else. It just isn't safe for her to stay somewhere we can't reach her. Not while Charlie-girl's killer is still out and about."

"We're with you." Modo said sagely. Vinny nodded his head in agreement.

"That's why I think she should move in with us for the time being. I also think that we shouldn't let her run errands and do the grocery shopping along either. For all we know someone may be watching us, waiting for a chance to get close to her. We can't rule out our enemies either. Limberger, Greasepit, Karbuckle, exct. Because either way you look at things, they know what happened to Charlie and will see Shay as a weakness to be exploited."

"That's true."

"If they had been aware of how much we had cared about Charlie-girl they could have exploited her and made us do whatever they wanted." Vinny said as he propped his chin up on his hand. Throttle nodded. His expression grim. That was an understatement if he had ever heard one. They were in a lose-lose situation.

If they let her leave, they could lose her forever. But if they kept her with them, they might end up destroying themselves.

When he thought about any of their enemies getting their hands on Shayera, the last living link to Charlie-girl and_ hurting_ her or _using_ her against them, he saw red. And when he thought of the danger he and his bros would place themselves in to protect her, he saw red again.

Either way they went, they would be weakened.

"Alright. She stays. Whats next?" Throttle blinked at them from behind his shades. His expression a little put out. Well, he hadn't expected them to be so completely dedicated to keeping Shayera there that they would completely ignore the things that they should talk about.

"Um...don't you think we should talk a little more about this and maybe take a vote before just up and deciding to keep her here?"

"No."

"I'd rather not. Thinking about the reasons from all angles is sort of depressing-" Vinny said in a bored tone as Modo pointed at him and nodded. Trying to silently say, _"He has a point." _

"Alright...if your sure that you guys don't want to talk about it anymore-"

"We're sure."

"Move on please."


	12. Chapter 12

_He could barely contain himself as he entered his apartment, his hand going automatically to the articles of clothing that he had stolen from Shayera Davidson's hotel room earlier that day after seeing her on the street and following her back to her hotel._

_He couldn't believe that his plan to flush Shayera out by killing her mother had worked! He walked through his apartment, flicking on the lights as he made his way back to his bedroom and pushed the door open to reveal a small room with a cot like bed with dark green sheets, a dresser, a small closet, and the walls-_

_He had them covered in pictures of Shay as a little girl and even a few more resent ones from her high school graduation when she had come to town to visit for three days._

_He should have grabbed her then, but he had stupidly thought that she would stay. He'd been furious with her when she had left again. He had wanted to rekindle their affection for one another in a more romantic fashion than he had when she was a little girl._

_He had wanted to take her out on a proper date. He had rented a suit, bought flowers-_

_But the moment that he had shown up, Charlene had pulled a gun on him and told him that she would never allow him close to her little girl. He had tried to explain to her that he and Shayera were meant to be together. That they loved each other, but the bitch just hadn't listened._

_She'd called him scum. Worthless and emasculated him before sending him away with the threat of having the police called on him._

_Which was why he had watched. And planned and finally killed Charlene, knowing that as long as she lived he and Shayera would never be together. He reached into his jacket pockets and pulled out the naughty emerald satin and black lace bra and panties he had stolen from her and paid them on his bed and looked up at the pictures on the wall above his bed and gave them a dreamy smile._

_"Soon Shayera..." Soon they would be together forever. _

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sorry that this chapter is short but I wanted to do something from the killers point of view before moving on and so far-

yeah. he's creepy.


	13. Chapter 13

After their long talk about what they were going to do next, the mice went to bed. Or at least Vinny and Modo did.

Throttle however felt wired and knew that he wouldn't be able to sleep no matter what he did. Which was why he prowled around the garage for a little bit and straitened up the tool shelf before making his way back into the apartment, grabbed three of the books that he and his bros had checked out to learn human anatomy and made his way down the hall intending to find a nice quiet place (without snoring in it) to learn some more about the human body, it's organs, and their functions; and found himself standing in the door way to Charlie's room with the door slightly open.

Shay was still out cold. And to his knowledge girls didn't snore. And he wouldn't be bothering her any if he did any light reading.

Would he?

He tucked the books under one arm and silently slipped into the room and gently closed the door and walked over to the bed and quietly snorted in amusement when all he could see was the very top of Shay's dark head. Everything else was under the covers that he had put over her earlier.

Reaching out with his free hand he gently pulled the covers down away from her face and tucked it in around her shoulders and under her chin then moved away from her so that he could sit down in the floor over by the sliding glass door across from the bed, and reached up with his tail to turn on the small lamp on the edge of the dresser. And pushed the little suit case with her stuff in it, out of the way, and settled his back against the smooth side of the dresser and cracked open one of the books and started reading.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there. All he knew was that when he finally memorized the last of the three books that he had with him and looked up, the sun was filtering through the glass door on his left and his legs were cramping from sitting still in such an uncomfortable position for so long.

He looked across the room at Shay for what had to have been the millionth time in so many hours, watching her as she rolled over onto her back and flung an arm up over her head and made a huffing sound in her sleep, and he smiled a little bit.

She was beautiful like this; with her skin flushed, her dark lashes resting against her cheeks like little crescents and her soft pink lips slightly parted-

And she was going to be their new room mate.

Goddess he and his bros must have been_ nuts_ to agree to keep her with them.

He laughed softly at his own musings and pushed his shades up a little bit and rubbed his burning eyes. They were idiots for wanting to keep such a _pretty_ and _unattached_ girl with them when they hadn't been close to a female in months other than Charlie; who had been like a sister to them.

They didn't know the first thing about how to act around someone of the fairer sex. And if not for their _painful_ lessons in manners from their mother when they had been kids, they wouldn't know to watch their language and act like total gentlemen.

But even that could only get them so far.

They didn't know any of her habits. Her favorite color/colors or foods.

What she kind of movies she liked to watch, or the books she liked to read, or the music she liked to listen too on the radio.

They didn't know if she was good with machines. Sure, she said she was but he probably wouldn't believe her until he saw the evidence with his own eyes.

He pulled his shades back down into place and looked at her again. Did she like stuffed animals? He wondered as he took in the innocent and almost childlike appearance she had when she slept.

It was a stupid thing to wonder about someone out of the blue, and had no relevance what so ever to the current situation, but for some odd reason the thought popped into his mind and he couldn't shake it.

She looked like a stuffed rabbit or bear type of girl.

He filed the information away in the back of his mind then mentally went over the little bit of information that he knew about her. He knew that she was frightened of them. Not totally, but in a small sense at least. Which meant that they would have to work hard to endear themselves to her and make her feel _safe_ with them.

Hopefully without restricting her freedom or being too over bearing.

She was young, barely little more than a child from his point of view. Yet considered an adult by her peers.

And she was in a vulnerable place due to the loss of her mother.

They would have to _watch_ her to make sure that some asshole didn't decide to take advantage of her in one way or another. He reached up and turned off the lamp and set the books aside so that he could sit there and stare at the sky for a few more minutes before he had to leave the room.

He sat there for about ten minutes staring up at the sky, watching the different colors play across the pale blue in vivid hues of pink, orange, and periwinkle blue with bright yellow. As Shay shifted under the blanket and started to stir on the bed. He looked her way for a second and quietly got to his feet and made for the door, not wanting to get caught in the room with her when she realized what had happened the night before and threw a fit.

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Shay's eyes fluttered open and stared at the vaguely familiar off white ceiling with little holes in it and petrified pieces of gum sticking to it and she frowned. What was she doing in her mother's room? Laying...

She lifted her head a little bit and looked around, noting the lavender blanket on top of her, the soft purple walls with hazel trim, the sliding glass door-

Why was she laying down in her mothers room? She couldn't remember going to sleep. All she remembered was the white furred mouse, what was his damn name? Vinny? Holding out his hand and saying, "You heard me baby girl. Your staying here." In an arrogant tone that had set her teeth on edge. After that she had told him off and gotten up to leave and _someone_ had grabbed her and then...nothing.

Dear god one of them had done something to her, hadn't they? She pushed the blanket back and got to her feet and started for the door when she saw her suit case on the floor against the wall and stopped long enough to gape at it in outrage.

What was her suit case doing here? When it should still be in the hotel, with her things put up in the flimsy little fake 'wood' dresser full of cockroaches. She stared at it for a second as if she couldn't believe that it was there, then turned her head and glared at the bedroom door for a second then reached down and picked up the suit case and tossed it onto the bed and then made her way back over there to make sure that _all_ of her things were there and nearly died on the spot of heart failuar when she found her favorite emerald satin and lace bra and panties set was missing.

"_Ohhh_, someone is going to die for this." She hissed as she hastily shoved everything back into her suit case and made for the door intending to do serious bodily harm to the three alien rodents in the apartment.


	14. Chapter 14

Throttle and Modo were sitting at the dining room table waiting for Vinny to finish cooking their breakfast when Shay walked up and paused just outside the door way and peeked around the corner for a second and glared at the two martians sitting at the dining room table while they sat there talking about her over a cup of coffee. "Shay-babe isn't going to react well to having been knocked out by Vinny, is she." The gray alien asked curiously.

"Nope."

"How do you think she's going to react to up strong arming her into moving in with us?"

"Probably violently if she's anything like her mother-" Throttle said as he drummed his fingers on the table while he lifted his coffee mug and took a sip of the scorching hot sludge that Vinny called coffee, and cringed a little bit at the bitter taste. "What's with the twenty questions?"

"I just want to know what we're in for... Do you think she'll yell?"

"I have no doubt that our ears will be _bleeding_ by the time she's done tearing into us." Shay blinked at the tone that was used by Throttle. He sounded so sure that she was going to scream at them. Had they learned nothing of earthling women from her mother? She didn't _have_ to scream at them to tear into them.

"Should we look sorry even if we aren't?"

Throttle made a funny throaty sound the growled. "_Hell yes_. It might save our lives." Maybe if they looked pitiful enough Shay-darlin' might take pity on them...and just kill Vinny instead of all of them. Modo was quiet for a second then asked.

Shay shook her head, her anger temporaraly on the back burner, and a bemused expression on her face as she thought. _I wouldn't be to sure of that._

"Do you think she'll understand if we told her that it was for her own good?"

"Dunno. She might if you didn't word it like that. When a guy says 'its for your own good' to a girl it sounds terribly sexist and condescending. It offends the girl's delicate sensibilities and makes her mad because she feels like your saying that she's dumb or something." Throttle said with a tired sigh.

Out in the hallway Shay had to bite her lower lip to keep from laughing. Well at least one of them was smart enough to know_ that_ little trigger.

"But that wasn't what I meant."

"I know. I'm just saying that if you say the words 'for your own good' she'll react badly to it." Throttle said as he caught sight of Shay's dark head tipped to the side a little bit just outside of the dining room door. Listening to them.

_Oh hell._ Throttle thought as he pushed back from the table and stood up and put his hands in the air palm out and hissed at Modo. "Don't make any sudden moves. Shay's awake and in the doorway and looking-" Shay came around the corner and _scowled_ at them, her anger returning as she stepped further into the room and glowered at them and snapped.

"I _can_ hear you. And boys you have a lot of explaining to do."

"Well...we can do that...if you promise not to hurt us." Throttle said nervously. Shay gave him a serene smile and took two more steps into the room and pulled out a chair and sat down.

"I'll do one better. You have ten minutes to explain _everything_ before I decide to skin you alive and make myself a nice _fur_ jacket with matching boots and gloves-" Throttle and Modo both got horrified looks on their faces, and Shay smiled evilly at them. "Now start talking."

"Well it's like this Shay-babe."

"You're all we have left of your mother who was like family to us-"

"And with the killer still running free-"

"We don't want you somewhere where we can't see you-"

"And we feel very strongly about keeping you safe-"

"What Vinny did to you last night is inexcusable, but he's worried that if we let you leave, you might get hurt or killed too."

Shay rolled her eyes as some of her anger drained away at the two hastily said explanations. _Some, _being the operative word. God that had to be the worst set of jumbled excuses for strong arming someone that she had ever heard before in her life. "Okay. I can understand that, but doing a mind meld or whatever and knocking me out isn't the best way to get me to cooperate." She said.

Modo made a funny half snort half laughing sound. "True. But Shay ma'am, you weren't really cooperating to begin with."

"Says one of the _rodents_ who helped his buddies grab me off of the street, interrogate me and hold me here against my will." Shay said in a bemused tone as the two aliens visibly flinched.

"Yeah... We own you an apology or two for our behavior."

"Your damn right you do." She hissed at them like a cat. Throttle and Modo both looked slightly surprised by the fact that she was hissing at them and Shay nearly flipped the table on top of them both and stomped on them. Dear god how could these boys be so smart yet so stupid at the same time?

_God save me from alien men_. Shay thought darkly as the third member of the alien lost boys club came walking in wearing her moms frilly sky blue and pink apron and carrying two plates. He paused for a second in the doorway and looked at his friends, then at her before saying. "Good morning Shay."

Shay didn't say anything as he set the food down on the table. "I'm assuming that your in here because your hungry-" Vinny said in a cheerful tone. Shay gave an un lady like snort.

"No. I'm in here because I'm a mite upset with the lot of you."

"Understandable. We have sort of stepped on your toes so to speak."

"That is a bloody understatement-" She kicked out the chair on her left as she tried to think of the best way to discipline them. Vinny looked at it for a second before Shay said, "Sit down. The four of us are going to have a long talk."


	15. Chapter 15

Shayera was in a fine rage after talking with the overgrown rodents about what they had done wrong.

But her rage had reached _new _heights in a very short time when she had finally got her explanation from two of them and had decided to give the third the chance to defend himself and the first thing out of the White ones mouth was 'forbid you to leave without someone to accompany' and 'it's for your own good' which had caused her to grab the younger alien and jerk him out of his chair and bodily slam him into the wall before she had been grabbed from behind.

She had been pulled off of him before she could _think_ to strangle him or something. Which was a pity really. She had sort of wanted to see if his white fur would turn blue from the lack of air.

And had been dragged back down the hall to her mothers room kicking and screaming and gently deposited on the bed and before she had been able to get over the fact that even though she had attacked one of them, the alien mice were still treating her so carefully (honestly didn't they ever get pissed and do someone actual bodily harm) and locked in the bedroom so that she could calm down.

Or maybe they were regrouping so that they could come up with a way to get rid of her. Whatever. She didn't care. All she knew was that she had been sitting here in her mothers bedroom for the past four hours.

She had gone through her suit case again and again and made sure that everything else was there and had been a little puzzled when she still wasn't able to find her favorite emerald satin and lace bra/pantie set and had made a mental note to ask one of the aliens about her missing underwear and bra the next time she got the chance. Hopefully they would come clean and give them back before she killed the lot of them.

After that she had grabbed some clean clothes and gone to take a shower and when she had come back she had found a tray of food on the bed along with a small note that was obviously from one of the smarter of the three.

**If you calm down and promise not to hurt us, we'll let you out.**

She snorted and ripped the paper up.

She refused to negotiate with terrorists.

But she had eaten her lunch and sometime around four or five in the evening she had finally managed to calm down enough to actually refrain from hurting any of them.

She was sitting on the floor wearing her summer dress, the soft filmy lavender calf length skirt was neatly arranged, and she had a book that she had found in the floor over by the sliding glass door when the door opened and one of the rodents peeked in. "Are you calmed down now little darlin'?"

She looked at the mouse, noting that it was the gray one and for a moment she thought of chucking the book in her hand at his head, but a second later decided against it and closed the book and set it aside. "I'm _calmer_ if that's what you mean."

"If I let you out do you promise to be on your best behavior?"

"I'm not a child and after what you and your friends have done, I don't have to promise you anything. But yeah. I want out of this room." The gray alien nodded his head a look of understanding on his face.

"Have I mentioned how sorry we are that we...ya know?"

"No."

"Then me and my bros will make a point to apologize often until you forgive us." Shay got to her feet and smoothed down the surface of her skirt. She didn't want their damn apologies. Especially when they didn't mean them. What she wanted was to have a choice from now on, and not to be strong armed into doing what the guys wanted simply because they thought they knew what was best for her.

_No one_ knew what was best for her; but her.

"Yeah. You do that." Shay said as she walked over to the door and looked up at his face. He gave her a strained smile that made her feel like a bully as he opened the door and stepped back so that she could get out before looking her over and complimenting her appearance.

She looked darn pretty in that pale purple dress of hers, especially with her pretty dark hair curling all over the place around her face and shoulders. Shay blushed a little bit but said nothing as she walked past him out of the room and into the hallway.


	16. Chapter 16

When Vinny found out that Throttle and Modo may be letting Shay out, he decided to leave for a little bit since he wasn't sure if it would be a good idea to stick around. Shay had already tried to attack him once and the memory of being jerked up out of his seat by such a_ small_ and _dainty_ little girl was, well...frightening. Which was why he had decided to split for a little while.

Only pausing on his way out the door to tell Throttle that he'd be back in a few hours with some flowers and stuff for Shay. Hopefully she'd be calm enough not to rip his head off by then so that he could give the stuff to her.

So he left. Leaving Throttle and Modo to deal with the angry female alone.

_Damn his hide._ Throttle thought as he started to set the table for dinner at about ten minutes to five and sent Modo to see if Shay had settled down enough to be let out to join them for the dinner that he had meticulously cooked in her honor.

His small way of more or less _welcoming_ her into their little make shift family.

He had just finished setting the table and walked into the kitchen to check on the food to make sure that it didn't burn when Modo walked into the dining room and seated Shay in the place that Throttle had fixed for her, next to his own seat and instantly noticed that his leader had been smart enough not to lay out a fork or knife for Shay just yet.

He probably wouldn't give her anything more than a spoon until he was absolutely sure that she wasn't going to stab one of them with it. Not the best way to conduct an experiment to gauge the wrath of an angry woman. But he had to give his bro props for thinking outside the box.

Even if that box was going to hurt like hell when said angry female shoved it someplace_ real_ uncomfortable.

Modo had just pushed her chair in when Throttle came out of the kitchen carrying two plates. One with fried chicken legs and thighs piled high on the glass. And another with a blooming onion (complete with dipping sauce) that had taken him nearly forever to make because he had gone through close to twenty smaller onions because he had kept _missing_ steps from the cook book that he had bought.

He set the plates down and looked at Shay then glanced at the spoon for a second, as if wondering if it was still there on the table before commenting on Shay's dress. "You look nice in that color." He said in a gruff yet polite tone causing her to blush a little bit.

"Thanks." Shay said automatically. His complement must have taken her by surprise because one second she was blushing and the next she was sort of scowling at him. Throttle's lips twitched in amusement, yet he said nothing more. He just shrugged his shoulders and went back into the kitchen, leaving Modo to try and engage Shay in polite conversation in an effort to get to know her a little better.

While Throttle collected the salad that he had made and the plate of baked potato's along with the butter, sour cream and whatever else he could think of to grab while he was still in the kitchen before making his way back to the dining room and setting that stuff out too then took his seat next to Shay, and once again glanced towards the spoon as if to see if it was still there.

It was. So maybe he was being a bit more paranoid than usual but he couldn't help but feel wary of Shay after her little display of temper towards Vinny earlier. In his opinion anyone who could scare Vinny needed watching. "So your feeling better now?" He ventured to ask curiously as he turned his head to look at her completely instead of just watching her out of the corner of his eyes.

Shay looked at him for a second. "I must be or this spoon that you keep glancing at would already be cutting into someplace uncomfortable on your body." Throttle reached out and carefully, slipped the spoon off of the table and into his hand which disappeared some place under the table where Modo's tail snatched it from his hand as he gave Shay a friendly smile before she looked down and noticed the spoon was gone.

"Not taking any chances are you guys?" She asked in an amused tone. Both Throttle and Modo gave her strained smiles and murmured.

"No ma'am." In unison.

Of course they weren't taking any chances. They did not want something horrible done to them by this tiny slip of a woman.

They would never live down the humiliation of being taken out by a girl with a spoon. Especially since Vinny wasn't around to be taken out along _with_ them. Because they knew that if they were taken out while he was out and about, then his mouth would cause them further humiliation because they were sure that Limberger and his goons would hear the damn fool_ laughing_ at their misfortune.

"Well then I have a silly question for you. How am I supposed to eat if your not going to let me have a fork and knife?" Shay asked as Throttle fixed the plate in front of him and picked up his fork and knife and started to tear apart the chicken on his plate before he set the utensils aside, and turned his chair a little bit to face her as he used his foot to partially drag her chair out and side ways to face him.

And then picked up the fork and speared some of the food and then held it up to her mouth and nearly laughed when Shay's face turned a vivid red and she stuttered for a second and leaned back in as far as her chair would allow as he grinned at her. His intent clear.

To keep her from using a fork and knife against them in a sneak attack, he intended to feed her himself.


	17. Chapter 17

Shay touched her fingers to his wrist, stopping him as she shook her head. She couldn't eat any more. If she did, she'd either get sick or gain so much weight that Throttle would have to_ roll_ her out of the dining room.

And that would be rather embarrassing since she was wearing a dress. "I can't eat anymore." She rasped as she picked up the napkin that Modo had gotten for her earlier and used it to wipe her mouth. Throttle set the fork down and looked at the plate, noting that she had eaten three pieces of chicken, some of the salad and two baked potato's with everything on them and frowned a little bit. To his knowledge human females usually didn't eat so much unless they were either starving, pregnant, or had an eating disorder.

He made a thoughtful humming sound and made a mental note to monitor how much she ate from now on just to be sure that she was healthy. And started picking at what was left on her plate, making sure that everything didn't go to waste before fixing another plate full of food for himself and ate pausing from time to time between bites of food to make polite conversation.

"You seem calmer now than you were earlier."

"I am for the most part. I'm still pissed though."

Throttle made a humming sound and nodded his head in understanding. He knew that she was probably still pissed about Vinny knocking her out. And then having them go through her things just to bring them to her (because she saw that as an invasion of her privacy). Then there was the fact that they had locked her in the bedroom for most of the day and refused to let her out.

"You have every right to be pissed. Vinny shouldn't have knocked you out."

"You shouldn't have gotten my things either."

Throttle made another soft humming sound but didn't comment. It would be useless to argue with her on that point since he felt that his bros had done the right thing... Sort of.

He understood Vinny's point of view. About the killer still being on the loose and they needed to keep her close so that they could protect her. And he understood Shay' didn't like being strong armed, or being told what to do like a child, or having them go through her things.

She was independent minded, and young. She might not like being around them 24/7. She might find their personalities abrasive. Their over protective behavior, could be misinterpreted as them being too _possessive_ and _controlling_.

Their bachelor life style could be too distracting and irritating. It-_ they_ might keep her from dating. Settling down and having children of her own. After all what human male would allow his young and beautiful wife to still live with three unattached men?

If anything their presence would do her reputation more harm than good. "And I'm sort of missing my favorite pair of panties and the matching bra that goes with it..." Throttle gave no indication that he heard her at first, but then dropped his fork and turned his head to look at her as Modo choked on a mouth full of food. Both of them stared at her wide eyed for a second before Throttle growled something to the gray mouse in another language as his tail thrashed around in irritation.

Modo shook his head and said something back. Obviously denying taking her things.

Shay wasn't sure that she believed him. He had such a _guilty_ look on his face as Throttle turned back to her and said. "Modo said that he and Vinny never really handled your-uh, _delicate_ things. They just grabbed what they saw laying on the bed and stuff."

"What do you mean?" Shay demanded, her face paling a little bit. There was something about the way he had said, 'grabbed what was laying on the bed', that sent off warning bells in Shay's mind. Especially since she hadn't left any of her clothes out.

She'd folded everything and put it up in the flimsy little dresser.

Throttle opened his mouth to repeat himself but noted that she was looking a little pale and frowned. "What's wrong Shay?"

"You said that he and Vinny just grabbed what was laying on the bed-"

"Yeah."

"I didn't leave my clothes out. I folded everything and put it in the dresser. I do it out of habit so that other people won't see anything."


	18. Chapter 18

"Someone went through my stuff."

"Modo what did the room look like when you and Vinny went in? Was it messy?" Throttle asked, his laid back and easy going attitude vanishing in the blink of an eye. His facial expression was grim and held traces of tightly leashed anger.

Modo shook his head no. "Nah, man. Nothing like that. The room wasn't a mess at all. It was pretty clean. The only thing that _really_ stood out was that Shay's clothes were laid out on the bed. As if she had been trying to pick out what to wear. Everything was color coordinated, the shirts, the pants, the belts and shoes-"

Shay was starting to hyperventilate a little bit as she listened to Modo speak. She never laid her things out like that. She always knew what she was going to wear before she even bothered to get dressed. She had a small system that she liked to use. And _color_ wasn't a huge part of it.

Comfort and cleanliness however, were.

If she decided that comfort was what she wanted the most, then she'd grab whatever she had handy. Even if she had already worn the outfit for a week strait. If she was planning to go out grocery shopping or something, then cleanliness was what she went for.

She'd grab anything from the dresser or closet as long as it was clean.

"Someone went through my stuff." Shay said in a slightly more panicked tone. Throttle and Modo stopped talking and looked at her. She looked so pale. Her breathing was far too quick and her eyes, god they were so wide and stricken looking that Throttle reached out and put his hands on her shoulders.

"Breathe darlin."

"_Someone went through my stuff_."

"_Shay_. Breathe. If you don't calm down your going to pass out." Throttle said in a sharper tone than he intended, his temper surfacing for an instant before he pushed it back. He shouldn't have spoken so coldly to her, after all she was the one who'd had her privacy invaded by someone before his bros had gotten her things.

But goddamn it he_ hated_ seeing that stricken look on her face.

She started to look a little green- And his fur bristled and stood on end as soon as she slapped a hand over her mouth and made a distressed sound. "Hey! I said breathe!" Throttle growled when Shay's eyes started to drift closed.

Throttle hissed like a cat, his tail thrashing around wildly as he came out of his seat and caught her as she started to tip side ways and lifted her up out of the chair and held her against him and looked at Modo helplessly as he swore. "Shit..." Throttle said as he used one hand to smooth her dark hair back from her face then sighed.

Damn. This is not the 'welcome to the family' that he had envisioned for her.

This was an irritation that stirred his temper in a bad, _bad_ way for obvious reasons.

1) Someone had murdered her mother. 2) Shay didn't feel very safe at the moment. With them or not, there was a lot of trust issues. 3) Someone had broken into her hotel room and stolen some of her panties and bras. And 4) She was upset by these things. She had every right to be.

And these things _upset_ him too. They upset him greatly because he wasn't sure if there was really anything that he could do to make her feel better.

Throttle sighed and cradled Shay in his arms and looked at Modo. "We'll talk about this more after I put her to bed." Modo nodded his head and stood up and started to clear the table so that they could talk seriously without distraction.

A few minutes later Throttle came walking back into the room and sat back down in his seat and crossed his arms as Modo finished wiping down the table and asked, "She okay?"

"No." _Would you be okay in her place?_ Throttle wondered as Modo straitened his spine and studied him for a second.

"Want a beer?"

"God yes. Bring several, this is going to be a difficult thing to speak about." Throttle said as he unfolded his arms so that he could run one hand through his hair, pushing his long bangs back from his face before crossing his arms again while Modo ran into the kitchen and tossed the rag in the sink then grabbed a few beers and then made his way back and handed him one and set the other three down then sat in his own chair as Throttle opened his beer and set it aside.

"Okay. So everything looked neat to you?"

"Yeah. Freakishly so. My first impression of the room was that she was a little bit of a neat freak."

Throttle made a soft humming sound. He didn't think Shay was a neat freak, she merely liked being in a clean room. She probably found the order and cleanliness comforting. There was nothing wrong with that.

It was a personality quirk. Everyone had them.

Modo did. Vinny did. Even _he_ did.

Although his personality quirks were more like habits.

Like his really bad habit of walking up to random people and punching them. It was a habit that he had formed when he had been back on mars, fighting on the front lines. There had been only a few ways to relieve stress among the soldiers, and fighting had been one of long as excessive force was used, the soldiers had been able to knock each other around as much as they liked as long as the fighting didn't hinder their ability to fight the Plutarkians.

Outside of that he normally didn't do things like that unless he was totally sure that the person he was punching would be able to take the hit. And the habit was often more trouble than it was worth, but he sometimes couldn't help himself.

Once his temper and stress reached the boiling point, that was it. He'd literally knock down, kick down and tear into anyone that he thought would give him a decent fight.

"Was the door unlocked when you got there?"

"No."

"Was it ajar?"

"No."

"Was the window open?"

"No." Modo said with a frown as Throttle scowled. If the door wasn't left open, or unlocked and the window had been closed then whoever had broken into Shay's hotel room must have picked the lock. Which meant that the bastard was a pro at breaking and entering and had probably even been watching Shay's room, looking for an opening.

The thought made his blood run cold.

Modo must have come to the same conclusion since his expression darkened considerably. "Hey bro... You don't think that whoever broke into Shay's room is somehow connected to Charlie's murder do you?"

Throttle was quiet as he examined Modo's theory from all angles. The break in would have looked purely coincidental if not for the fact that it sounded like like had been well planned. And Charlie's murder had struck them as a little bit odd too. The personal feel to the crime had felt a little off to them. Like Charlie had been nothing more than bait or something.

"I dunno Modo-" But if whoever had broken into Shay's hotel room, was involved in Charlie's murder, then it only stood to reason that Shay might be the next victim that the sick bastard had in mind. "But we're not going to take any chances. I never want to see Shay look like she had before she passed out, again."


	19. Chapter 19

Forty five minutes later-

Vinny walked into the garage after going on a nice long ride, carrying a bouquet of white Peonies with some pale pink lilies, and a plastic bag full of candies and little stuffed animals to give to Shay as an apology for his rude and somewhat invasive actions the night before. He walked down the hall to the dining room hoping to find a nice cozy scene, and a very calm Shay-gal.

Instead her found two sullen bros, drinking beer at the table. And no Shay in sight.

_What the hell?_ Vinny wondered as he set the bag and the flowers on the table and looked from one of his bros to the other then said softly. "I take it Shay-gal was still a little pissed." Both Throttle and Modo finally looked at him, their expressions _dark_.

_Uh-oh._ Vinny thought in mild amusement. They looked as if the girl had just called them rat bastards or something. "No. She wasn't pissed. Not totally anyways." Modo said after a moment or so as Throttle polished off what was left of his beer then set the bottle down and sat back in his seat and folded his arms over his chest as Vinny took a step back and looked around then said.

"And yet I don't see her here. Or down the hall. Or-"

"She fainted." Throttle finally said in a rough, angry tone that had Vinny looking back at him with a curious expression on his face.

"Fainted?"

"Yeah." Modo said in a low tone as he propped his chin up in his metal hand and stared at the white martian. Vinny frowned and was about to ask why she had fainted. Part of him finding this little story amusing while another part of him was a little worried that the shock that he had given her the night before may have done some permanent damage when it shouldn't have, when Throttle looked at him and said in a deadly serious tone.

"Someone broke into Shay's hotel room last night before you and Modo got there to pick up her things-" Vinny blinked and let the words sink in before he tensed as Throttle continued speaking. "Some of her delicate's were taken, and she asked us about them. When Modo here told me about how her things had been lain out on the bed in the room, she freaked and fainted."

Vinny pulled out a chair and slowly sank down into it and sat there quietly for a second before saying. "But the door wasn't open or unlocked."

"The lock was picked."

"Then whoever did it had been watching her."

"Probably." Both Modo and Throttle said in unison as Throttle reached out and pushed one of his beers across the table to Vinny. Vinny grabbed it and popped the top off and took a long drink then set it down.

"You don't think whoever did it is in some way connected to Charlie's murder do you?" Vinny asked in a soft tone. Both Throttle and Modo got those dark looks on their faces again and Vinny swore.

"We can't let her leave the garage now. No matter how pissed she may get at us."

"I don't think that will be a problem bro. She's scared out of her wits, and won't be planning to leave anytime soon." Modo said gently. Throttle made an sound of agreement but didn't comment. Instead he started planning out the next few days.

He and his bros wanted Shay to feel totally safe with them. And since she didn't_ feel_ that right now, they were going to have to try and take her mind off of things until she was a little more comfortable around them, while protecting her from the sick bastard after her.

If he was indeed after her, instead of them.


	20. Chapter 20

Two weeks later-

Throttle set down the box of spare car and motorcycle parts that he had dug out of the small storage shed behind the garage while Modo and Vinny worked in Shay's room and the kitchen. Painting and redecorating so that Shay would feel more comfortable in the apartment with them since she had moved in.

They had been trying to make her feel more at home, and take her mind off of the things (her mothers murder and the fact that someone had stolen some of her delicate's). They had gotten and installed a security system. They had taken her shopping for new furniture for the bedroom and gotten her a new dresser, a vanity to put her make up and other girly things on, some new lamps and that had been all that she was willing to let them get for her.

Which had made them change tactics a little bit and take her shopping for clothes since she only had a few outfits. They'd spent the better part of an entire day dragging her from one girly boutique to another making her look at things and helping her pick out clothes. It had been sort of fun for them to pick out clothes that Shay would look good in.

It had certainly helped them understand why little girls played dress up with their dollies. It was a nice game.

And the fun would have lasted if Shay hadn't refused to co operate with them. Apparently she didn't like the girly girl clothes that they had picked out. Ribbons and lace sort of looked out of place on her. Or at least that's what she had said.

But she did however pick out three dresses. Three shirts and two pairs of pants.

And that had been it. Which had caused the three aliens to _despair_ for the girl. Which was why they had gone back every day since that first week and bought little things. A dress here, a nice shirt or skirt there. And hidden them all in the back of her closet where they knew that she wouldn't find them until it was too late to take them all back.

After that they had made a day of dragging her into the local Lowe's store to look at paint for the bedroom and kitchen. And then the day after that, they had all cleaned out the garage together and organized the tools and scrap parts, then they had all gone out for dinner and ice cream.

The day after that, the guys had rented a bunch of girly flicks and sort of hog tied Shay and made her sit down with them in the living room and watch movies with them thinking that it would be a good bonding experience. They had started the movie night off with the classic Titanic and had got about half way through before Vinny had started getting pissed.

Not that anyone wouldn't be pissed about it. The movie had a good story line to it, but that was about it. Shortly after that half way point Modo and went into the kitchen and dug out a spoon and walked back into the living room and handed it to Throttle and practically _begged_ the man to hollow out his skull and spare him further nightmare material about giant ships doomed to sink.

Deciding to take mercy on the gray and white mice, Throttle turned the movie off and picked up another. Hope Floats. It had been just as bad if not _more_ bad than the Titanic. Shay had been so irritated by the choice in movie the second time around that she had snapped the little shoe lace that they had used to to tie her up and had walked across the room and kicked the TV off of the shelf, breaking it.

Ending their semi well planned bonding experience/movie night. And causing them to go out early the next day TV shopping.

Today they were working on getting the apartment fixed up, and working out the final details of the garage's grand reopening. Shay was working on the publicity details a few feet away as Throttle set the scrap parts out on the bottom shelf against the wall. Finally after several minutes of silence Shay came up behind him and stopped him. "I can take care of the rest, why don't you and the guys go sit down and relax."

Throttle looked at her with a curious expression on his face. Wondering why she was trying to get him to leave the room. "I don't think you should be lifting these-" He said gently as he picked another piece out of the box and set it on the shelf. "They're too heavy for you and you might hurt yourself if you try."

Shay gave an un lady like snort. "I think I can manage." She said as she tried to_ push_ him away from the box. He looked down at her as she pressed her shoulder against his side. But he didn't budge an inch.

"Is there a reason that you want me out of the way, Shay darlin?" He asked in amusement as she tried to push him away again. This time bracing her hands against his side and pushing until her face bloomed with this pale red flush.

It was rather cute really. And sort of funny.

"I want you and the guys to rest up and relax a bit." Shay said as she pushed him again. He took a subtle step to the side just to mess with her a little bit, noting the way her expression flickered from happy to determined in under 2.0 seconds.

Curious about why she would want them to rest and relax, her turned his body to face her and was almost pushed back. _Jeez. How much force was she using anyways?_ He wondered as he grasped her wrists and gently pulled her hands away from his body and leaned down a little bit and kissed her forehead then asked. "What for?"

"Because you've all been running yourselves ragged these past weeks trying to take care of me." She sounded just a little bit offended about that fact to him. Maybe because she wasn't used to having anyone try and take care of her in such a hands on manner before.

He shrugged his shoulders. "So?"

"So I want you to sit down and take a load off!"

"Don't wanna. Besides the grand re opening for the garage is tomorrow and I want to make sure that everything is done."

"I can do this stuff Throttle. Go sit down." Shay said as she tired to pull her hands free of his grasp.

"No." He said with a scowl. There was no way in hell that he was going to just leave the room and let someone as delicate as Shay do the heavy lifting. She'd hurt herself.

"Throttle! I can do this! Just go rest!"

"No-" Throttle growled, irritation coloring his tone. Why wouldn't she just drop it?

He let go of her wrists and wrapped his tail around her slender waist and used it to move her away from the shelves, and close to the door then set her down and walked over to her, and put his hand at the small of her back and started to push her. "Now go do something constructive other than getting on my nerves and go introduce Vinny and Modo to the colorful glitter that we got at the store the other day to make signs for the garage's reopening." He said as he all but pushed her out of the garage.

Shay gnashed her teeth at his chauvinistic words and turned around as he started back over to the shelves and slipped one of her shoes off. Her temper boiling. How dare he treat her like a little girl! How dare he talk down to her like she had no other_ purpose_ in life but to stand on the side lines and look _pretty_ for the big bad mousy man!

She reared back her arm, her shoe in hand and threw it at his head. It hit dead center of his head then fell to the ground as he went totally still for a second before turning his head to glare at her over his shoulder, his tail thrashed around for a second as she slipped off her other shoe and threw it.

It missed him and caused him to turn around and take a dangerous step towards her as he hissed at her. "Do that again, and I'll take you over my knee and spank you."

Shay hissed at him like a little wild cat, taking him aback a little bit. Just what the hell was her problem anyways? He was doing the heavy work to spare her unnecessary time in the hospital. Why did she not seem to understand that?

"I'd love to see you try and spank me you over grown-" He narrowed his eyes at her from behind his shades and took another step closer to her, a low growl rumbling in his chest. She had better not say what he thought she was going to say or he was going to snap a collar around her neck and _ground_ her cute little ass like a child, for insubordination. "_Rodent_. It might give me a chance to remove your balls."

He blinked and took an involuntary step back thinking that she actually looked pissed enough to carry out her threat, giving her the time to take off down the hallway and escape him.


	21. Chapter 21

The grand re-opening of the garage went off without hitch thanks to everyone's hard work.

And even though they had people lined up around the block to get their vehicles fixed, and checked. Neither Throttle or Shay were very happy at the moment.

After their little tiff last night, their bickering had escalated and Throttle had been suffering the brunt of some very disturbing, and sinister minded little pranks that he just knew Shay had set up for him.

The sinister and disturbing pranks went something like this.

When he had slipped on his boots this morning after getting dressed, he's gotten a painful surprise in the form of a thumb tack which was followed by finding his bike covered in graphite that had been both obscene and offensive on so _many_ levels.

Followed by a trip to the bathroom to use the facilities and finding nothing but pine cones to use as toilet paper. Which had just _cruel_ in his opinion and had given him a small glimpse at just how pissed Shay must have been at him for last night. Although he had been a little puzzled about _when_ she had managed to go looking for pine cones.

And though he would have liked to retaliate, he couldn't think of anything truly inventive to do to her that wouldn't hurt her.

He glanced over his shoulder at the little devious minded firecracker and bared his teeth and growled softly then turned back to his current task of fixing little old lady Musa's car and nearly jumped out of his skin when Shay stomped on the tip of his tail (that he had stupidly and carelessly left laying on the floor) _with_ the wide three inch hard heels that she had worn to work in today. Causing his fur to bristle and stand on end as he turned his head slowly to look at her.

Wondering what she would do to him if he used his tail to jerk one of her legs out from under her and weighed the pros and cons for a moment. Hoping that _any_ pain she could rain down on him would be totally worth it.

And after a second or so he decided against it since she was obviously more inventive than him and might mess with him on an even crueler level. Still...

"Ow." Throttle said as Shay turned and looked at him, an totally innocent look on her face. How did she managed to look so damn innocent when she was the devil incarnate? Throttle wondered as she glanced at his tail, which was now safely wound around his leg as he glared at her.

"Something wrong?"

_Yeah, you're your mothers daughter._ Throttle thought darkly though he was careful to keep any signs of irritation from his expression and voice. "You stepped on my tail."

Her eyes widened and she got a mock shocked look on her face. "I did?" Throttle had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from growling at her. The girl was so shameless that she should have been an actress.

He expected to hear her apologize for stepping on his tail, but instead she said nothing. She just grabbed a tool from _his_ box and gave him a funny looking once over as she slipped by him and walked back over to the car that she was working on and leaned over the motor and started working again.

Shay knew that she was being juvenile about her pranks, but she was determined to teach the over grown rodent a lesson that he wouldn't soon forget about crossing a woman. However nothing she seemed to do so far made him sorry. And she had been pretty sure that after being forced to use pine cones as toilet paper this morning that he would be willing to at least semi beg for her forgiveness for his careless words last night.

But so far he was proving to be a tougher nut to crack than she thought he would be. And as odd as that was, the situation was spiraling out of control. She had gone from playing mean pranks on him to thinking that he looked rather cute when he was pissed and had even been sort of day dreaming about pushing him down and kissing him until he passed out from the lack of air.

Which was her _real_ problem in a nutshell. She was developing a little bit of a crush on the chauvinistic alien. And it was frustrating her in so many ways that it just wasn't funny.

She needed to put an end to their bickering (no matter how much she was loath to do it) before she decided to torture him further. She was about to do just that when he came up behind her and leaned in, both of his hands braced on either side of her hips, his body crowding hers, his chest just barely brushing her back and hissed in her ear.

"Keep up the bullshit, Shay and your going to get hurt. I'll let you little tantrum slide this time since I know that I must have done something to set you off. But in exchange I expect you to _back off_ on the physical torture. Thumb tacks, tail stepping and pine cones are now off limits. Understand?"

"Aww. Did I hurt the big bad mousy?" Shay mocked, her mouth running further ahead of her mind than even _she_ seemed to realize.

Throttle made a soft amused snickering sound next to her ear as he shifted slightly and wrapped one hand around her throat warningly as he leaned in just a little bit more, his body pressing hers down until the metal bit into her skin painfully as his tail snaked around her legs and lifted, tipping her even more off balance and forcing her even further into the area where the motor was.

"Hey!"

"Cover your head." Was all Throttle said as he stepped back and tipped her completely into one of the small openings, and firmly wedged her body from her head to her shoulders into the wire filled opening and stepped back even more as the car lid came down and slammed into her butt, causing her to give a startled scream while he laughed.


	22. Chapter 22

Shortly after Throttle pushed her down and let the hood of the car smack her on the rear, Shay and the damned infuriating alien mouse called a truce so that they could get back to work. After all fighting amongst themselves was bad for business because it made them look incompetent. And made their customers lose what little bit of confidence they had in them.

The hours passed quickly until it was finally five in the evening and it was close to closing time. Throttle was in the garage door way talking to Vinny and Modo, both of whom had returned a short while ago from doing their advertising jobs and was now on cooking duty.

Shay was starting to put the hood down on the car that she had just finished fixing when she caught sight of someone standing a few feet away from her. Thinking nothing of the person standing there watching her she picked up a wrench and was wiping the grease off of it when she heard the person watching her speak. The voice making her still instantly as her blood turned to ice in her veins.

"You sure grew up pretty Shay." She turned her head and looked at the person, silently hoping that this wasn't the same person that had kidnapped her from school as a little girl, and told her that he intended to marry her.

She_ hoped_ that this wasn't the same man that had used a metal pipe to 'pop her cherry' as he had called it, then had left her curled up, bleeding and crying in the back of his van before he had stopped at a gas station to get her some candy to make her stop crying. And allowed her time to escape from his van and get to a phone and call her mother.

She hoped that that same man was long gone. That he had died or been locked up, but as her gaze locked with those same chilling eyes that she recalled from her childhood, she felt that hope wither and die as she was forced to relive the _horror_ of those five hours that he'd had her at his mercy, in an instant.

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He'd been on pins and needles for weeks now since she had come back to town, waiting his chance to get in close so that he could see his Shay again. He'd been watching, and waiting, and planning everything until it was all perfect.

He'd been disappointed when he had found out that she wasn't in the hotel anymore. But he'd gotten over the feeling rather quickly when he had realized that she must have gone home to the garage.

He would have stopped by sooner, but he had noticed that the same three men that had hung around her bitch mother, had started hanging around Shay too. Alarming him somewhat until he had managed to observe them in a closer to determine their intentions towards his future bride. And had noticed that they treated her much like older siblings would.

They were protective and possessive, but not in the fashion that lovers were. Which meant that he may not have to kill them too. At least not yet.

He stared at Shay, noting the wide eyed look she was giving him and unconsciously reached up to smooth his slicked back blond hair with his hand to be sure that every strand was in place after he shifted his hold on the flowers that he had bought when he had started for the garage. He had gotten her favorite flower.

White irises with pale pink roses.

Beautiful flowers to match his beautiful girl.

He gave her a nervous smile, his stomach fluttering as if he had swallowed a hundred butterflies. "Do you remember me Shayera?" He asked almost shyly, hoping that she would smile at him or throw herself into his arms and let him hold her.

Her face drained of all color as he took a step towards her. She took a step back, and he extended the hand holding the flowers towards her, expecting her to take them but instead she gave a loud terrified scream and threw the wrench it her hand at his head while she stumbled back until she hit the wall as the large man decked out in the torn jeans and the stained white T-shirt jerked around to look at him then at Shay, with a frown on his face as the wrench hit somewhere behind him.

"Shay! What are you doing?" Throttle almost yelled as he looked back and forth between the man wearing the cheesy sky blue suit, holding a bouquet of flowers, and the terrified looking girl with her back flattened against the wall next to him.

Modo and Vinny pushed their way past him a little bit, worried/curious to see what was going on as Shay seemed to finally find her voice and yelled at the man to get out of her garage, shocking all three of the aliens to the very tips of their tails.

This wasn't normal behavior when dealing with a customer. Was it?

"Get out! Get out of my garage! Get away from me! Don't ever come near me or my home again! Your not welcome here!" Someone grabbed her by the shoulders and she thrashed around, instinctively trying to get away from the painful, bruising grip that was making her eyes tear up.

She was hyperventilating again, like she had the other night, her expression panicked. Modo looked over at Throttle and Vinny with a helpless look on his face as Vinny practically ran over to the guy and gave him an apologetic look as he herded him out of the garage.

Apologizing about Shay's freak out and trying to explain it away as something that had to do with her mothers death when he knew it was full blown terror that had her acting so strangely and wondered what it was exactly about the guy that had set her off.


	23. Chapter 23

"Shay! Open the door!" Throttle yelled as he smacked the bathroom door with his fist twice, causing it to rattle a little bit on it's hinges then dropped his hand and pressed his ear to the door to listen. He could hear the harsh hysterical sound of Shay's breathing, could hear the soft whimpers and sobs.

Just what the hell had happened when his back had been turned? He wondered as he looked at Vinny and Modo, both of whom were watching him with almost panicked expressions on their faces. His concern for Shay _spiked_ and he lifted his hand and flattened it against the door and tried a different tactic to see if she would respond. "Shay? Sweetheart? I need you to open the door and come out."

Her sobs got louder and his heart ached in his chest. Gods what the hell was going on? Vinny came up behind him and placed his hand on the door and nudged him out of the way then spoke softly, coaxingly. "Shay, baby, come out. We're not mad about what happened we just need to know why your crying. Your breaking our hearts darlin."

Shays sobs quieted for a second and she hiccuped. "No! I don't want to tell you!" She didn't want them to know what had happened to her. She had always felt so damned ashamed of it. As if it were her fault when it hadn't been.

It was a child's nature to be innocent and trusting. And her tormentor had taken advantage of that fact. He'd taken advantage of _her_.

"Shay? Angel-" Throttle started to say when something slammed into the door and shattered, he and Vinny jumped back and stared at the door wide eyed as Shay screamed at them at the top of her lungs.

"_Don't you dare call me that!_ Don't any of you _ever_ call me that! I will not be called by the same name _he_ gave me!"

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Shay was fighting a losing fight with the mad monster in her head.

All she could see, all she could hear-everything was like it was the day that she had been kidnapped by that sick bastard. She'd suppressed the memories as a child to help her cope with what had happened, but after seeing the one responsible for hurting her as a child.

It was as if the dam holding her fear, and anxiety back, had broken down. Spilling forth almost ten years of suppressed horror.

She could almost feel his hands on her skin, holding her down while she kicked and screamed for her mother to save her. She could almost still feel the pipe that he had used on her, breaching her hymen then tearing the wall of her womb a little bit before he pulled it out of her.

She could still feel the agony as if it had happened just a moment ago. Could recall curling her body in a ball to protect herself as blood ran down the inside of her legs. She gasped and doubled over, her mental distress was so great that she could still feel_ everything_ as if it had just happened. And it made it so hard to_ breathe_!

She heard someone speaking to her again, though the sound was very soft, almost soothing. Far away. Or maybe it simply sounded that way because she was panicking and her consciousness was fading in and out.

Her chest hurt. Her lungs burned from not being able to draw in a proper breath and she was slowly rocking back and forth, her hands threading through her hair. Pulling painfully as a distressed moan escaped her throat.

It hurt._ It hurt..._

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"Guys. What do you think Shay meant by 'name that he gave her'?" Vinny asked in a slightly shaken tone as he looked at both Modo then Throttle before Throttle swore violently. Something seemingly clicking in his mind as he all but shoved Vinny out of the way and dug into his right front pants pocket and pulled out a knife and flicked it open. And started to work the screws out of the door so that he could take it down quietly so as not to startle Shay since he had no idea what her current frame of mind was.

It figured that Charlie would have hidden some deep dark secret involving a personal tragedy. But this- _This_ was too much.

Shay was suffering for fuck sake, and they didn't know how to help her unless they knew details. But asking for the details would be like taking the same knife in his hand and stabbing her with it then pouring salt into the wound.

It would be cruel to reopen her wounds further. So all they could do now is work around what they knew (or in this case didn't know) and _pray_ that she wasn't in the state of mind to harm herself. Or at least pray that he could get the damn door down _before_ she could harm herself.

He finished taking the screws out of the hinges and let them drop to the floor then grasped the door knob and pulled slightly. There was a semi loud creaking sound and the faint sound of Shay scrambling across the floor which was littered with broken glass as he dropped the door and threw himself into the room so that he could grab her before she grabbed one of the pieces of glass.

She screamed as his arm slipped around her waist, lifting her up off of the floor and against his side and sank to the floor as he grabbed her hands and curled his body around her as she screamed and kicked and cried.

It was like watching someone lose their mind.

It was horrible.

And he and his bros couldn't help but think that Shay wouldn't be hurting so much if they had been a part of her life before now.


	24. Chapter 24

He sat there for what felt like forever before Shay quieted, although maybe 'quieted' was a bad way to put it. She'd screamed and cried until her voice had gone out. Then because she had been hyperventilating for so long she had stopped breathing for a few minutes.

Her body's way of taking some time to reboot itself so that she would breathe normally when she started to breathe again. But it had still been worrying. For a few moments it had felt as if Throttle had been holding a dead body. She'd been so still and limp that he had started to panic himself.

If Modo hadn't spoken up and told him why she had stopped breathing, and that he should time her just in case, then he probably would have flipped out on his bros. But she _had_ started breathing again, and each shuddering breath had been the most _wonderful _gift that any of them had ever received.

Throttle had finally stood up with Shay cradled in his arms and had walked out of the bathroom and down the hall to her room and noted the faint smell of paint fumes and looked around the room. The man had to hand it to Vinny, he had some real artistic talent. "The fumes won't hurt her." Vinny said from somewhere behind him.

He turned his head slightly intending to ask how Vinny was so sure that the fumes wouldn't hurt her, but then stopped and decided that it wasn't worth it and then stepped back away from her room and headed a little bit further down the hallway to the room that he and his bros shared and laid her on _his_ bed and pulled the covers up over her shoulders.

She curled up in a ball under the covers and whimpered and he gnashed his teeth. He didn't know what to do. How could he and his bros help her if they didn't know what they were up against? And her reluctance to speak of what was hurting her so much (while understandable) was almost as_ bad_ as hearing about it actual event.

His mind had been running away with him, ever since he had heard her say the word 'he'. Dredging up every _agonizing_ and _torturous_ thing that he could imagine one human doing to another. Each one worse than the last.

It was painful.

Shay whimpered again as he reached out to brush her dark hair back from her ashen face, causing him to pause for a second, his hand poised just over her head. She took a deep shuddering breath followed by another and he sighed and drew back his hand and let it fall to his side figuring that if she had been awake she probably wouldn't have wanted to be touched at the moment anyways. And turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

"Is she okay?" Modo asked as he walked out of the room. Throttle looked at him, his expression grim.

"How do you think she's doing." It wasn't a question. And there was no mistaking the _bite_ in his leader's tone. Nor was there no mistaking the anger simmering just below the surface of his skin. Modo could sense it coiling it's way through Throttle's body like a living breathing thing.

"Not good, I'd imagine." Modo said gently as Throttle sighed and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.

"I've never seen someone fall apart like that." Throttle said softly.

Modo made a humming sound but said nothing. He'd only seen one person act like that, and that had been his sister. The one that had killed herself after a group of Plutarkians had gotten a hold of her. He'd still been fairly young when it happened. New to the martian military forces and totally unprepared for what the enemy would do to his family if they got their hands on them.

He'd left both of his sisters in the safety of their home, while he went out fighting. Stupidly thinking that he would be able to keep the Plutarkians far away from them. But some of the fish bastards had slipped around him and his squad and laid waste to about five miles of once inhabited land.

They'd beaten his oldest sister with in an inch of her life and kidnapped the younger one and burned their home to the ground. He'd come back from the front lines to check on his sisters and had been utterly devastated by what he had found.

He'd taken his older sister and moved her onto the base for medical treatment then had gone after the bastards that had taken his little sister. He'd tracked them for weeks, killing anyone and anything standing in his way. And finally at the six week mark, he'd found them.

He'd snuck into their camp, killed at least nine of their men and found his sister. But she hadn't been the person that he remembered. Six weeks with the Plutarkians, being tortured and god knew what else had left her incapable of determining friend from foe.

She'd attacked him as soon as he had opened the door to her cell and had ripped out one of his eyes in their scuffle. Then she had escaped him and run right into a cross fire that had erupted outside.

She'd been killed by a combination of laser fire from her fellow martian and the Plutarkians. To this day he still had no idea if he would have been able to help her if he had managed to take her home. All he knew was that the experience had made him work harder to protect the family that he'd had left.

So maybe her death wasn't for nothing, but that didn't mean that it was any easier to bear.

"I have. Shay has something called post traumatic stress disorder-" Modo said quietly. Throttle turned his head and looked at him curiously, probably wondering what he knew about whatever the hell Modo had just mentioned. "It's caused by several different things. In women the general causes are; rape, physical attack, sexual molestation, childhood physical abuse, and being threatened by a weapon. The melt down that we witnessed earlier was set off by a 'trigger' of some sort. There are two types of triggers, internal triggers mainly consist of _memories, emotions, bodily sensations_. And external which consist of _situations_, _people_ and _places_ that a person would encounter in their every day life. In Shay's case, we can rule out _places_. As for the other two..."

"Shay was perfectly fine up until that guy in the suite showed up. Could _he_ have been the trigger thingy that you mentioned?" Throttle asked before looking around for a second then frowning. Where the hell was Vinny? He'd been standing in the hall a little while ago and now he was MIA. _What the fuck? _

"Probably... Are you wondering where Vinny is?" Modo asked. Throttle looked at him again, his expression telling. Modo gave a brittle sounding laugh before saying. "The kid had a nifty idea to go ask a favor from our buddy officer Joey. He's going to see if he can get any information on Shay's past. Since there's a strong possibility that whatever happened to her was recorded in a police file somewhere."

"Isn't that a bit invasive?"

"We don't have a choice in this anymore Throttle. Not after what happened earlier. If we leave Shay to deal with this _alone_, and let her flip out again, she might hurt herself. We need to know what happened so that we can figure out how to help her."

"What do we do in the mean time to help her?" Throttle asked in an uncertain tone that Modo had never heard before. It must really gall the younger alien to feel this helpless and uncertain.

"For now we watch her. Limit contact with her unless she initiates it first. Talk in soft tones when your around her. She needs to feel _safe_ and _secure_ and _loved_ above all things. Or she might give in to her darker thoughts and emotions and become a danger to herself. Her sleeping habits and normal behavior patters may change. She may have nightmares, or trouble resting. She might develop an eating disorder. She might with draw into herself and become emotionally numb. She may become depressed and cry easier-"

"Sounds like hell."

"It can be. And if the thoughts and feelings persist we may have to have her hospitalized. It probably wouldn't hurt us any to have a doctor on speed dial. To help her feel safe from the monsters in her head when she sleeps, it may be a good idea to start sleeping in the same room with her. Instead of our usual displays of affection, if she will let us, then hold her hand. Or give her a length of your tail. Tell her that it's okay if she squeezes or bites if she's scared... I'm sorry man but that's all I can think of." Modo said quietly.

Throttle shook his head. "Don't be sorry. We can figure out the rest as we go."


	25. Chapter 25

Vinny stared at the file that Officer Joey had handed to him for what had to be the hundredth time in so many seconds, in utter disbelief. He couldn't believe that something so sickening had happened to Shay when she was a little girl. Nor could he believe that the person responsible for her pain, was _still_ out there, possibly hurting other little girls.

"This is everything you have?" He asked for the third time. His mind still trying to process what he was reading, making it difficult for him to recall if he had asked the question already or not.

Officer Joey, stood behind the desk digging in a file cabinet that was nearly as tall as he was, held up one finger. Not the least bit surprised or bothered when the alien asked him for the fourth time as he located the file that he was looking for.

It was the medical file where Shay's injuries had been documented. He handed the file to Vinny and was about to warn him that the contents of the file weren't for the faint of heart when Vinny flipped it open and let out a long snake like hiss as his breath let his lungs.

The pictures documenting Shay's wounds, were horrible.

The person who had _done_ this to her was horrible!

Vinny stared at the pictures, taking note of the images of the jagged ended, bloody pipe that had been used on Shay. He noted the picture of Shay laying in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines, her face so pale that she skin looked as white as Vinny's fur.

He noted the picture of the wound that Shay had received when she'd had to have surgery to repair the internal damage that her tormentor had caused. He even saw the pictures of the bruises she'd had on her hands from trying to fight him off. The bruises that she'd had on her legs. And even the large dark hand like shaped bruise that she had gotten on her pelvic bone when he had held her down.

Vinny closed his eyes and tried desperately not to imagine what she must have felt-

The nearly overwhelming, suffocating fear. The sheer agony and horror.

He tried not to imagine Shay laying under some sick bastard, screaming and crying for someone to save her-

He took several deep, shaky breaths and stood up. "You okay man?" Joey asked, concern coloring his tone. Vinny nodded his head and closed the file.

"Do you mind if I borrow these?"

"Well, we can't usually let someone take the files, but if you want to make copies-" Joey let his voice trail off and pointed to the copy machine to Vinny's left. "I can't stop you from taking the copies."

"Will the copy machine be able to copy the pictures?"

"Do you really want the pictures-" Joey asked as Vinny nodded his head. "Yes. The copy machine will copy the pictures."

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It had been two hours since Throttle had put Shay to bed and in that time both he and Modo had talked about some of the things that they could do to help Shay while cleaning the glass from the bathroom floor. Then Modo had talked the reluctant Throttle into putting the bathroom door back up.

After that the two had gone back to the bedroom and Modo had started reading while Throttle laid down on his bed next to Shay.

She seemed to be doing much better now then she had been earlier. Her breathing was normal, she wasn't shaking or shuddering anymore. She was finally _just_ sleeping. And Throttle and Modo couldn't have been more relieved.


	26. Chapter 26

Modo switched places with Throttle at about two in the morning when he got a little tired of reading and asked if it would be okay if he laid down next to Shay for a little while. Throttle didn't see a problem with the older male taking his place since Shay seemed to be sleeping rather soundly at the moment. Besides, someone had to keep an eye out for Vinny since he'd been gone for hours now and they were starting to worry.

It wasn't like Vinny to stay out so late without one or the both of them being with him. And the fact that he had yet to return was telling in itself. There was no doubt that what he had learned of Shay's past was probably something so bad that he felt he needed to clear his head before he even tried to come home.

Otherwise he'd probably have a breakdown himself.

Modo lay stretched out on his side, with his head resting on one arm, his eye closed, his breathing deep when Shay first started to _twitch_. It twitching was the right way to define what she was doing. Modo opened his eye as his tail came up and did this odd flicking motion, drawing Throttle's attention to them as Shay tried to burrow herself deeper into the pillow, her body was starting to shake and her expression (or at least what they could see of it) looked pained.

"Is she-"

"Yeah. She's having a nightmare." Modo said in a hushed tone as he slowly pushed himself up onto his elbow and used his metal hand to pull the covers up over her shoulder when she started shaking a little more violently.

"Should we wake her?"

"No. She has to wake up herself. If we woke her now, the nightmare would just resume the second she managed to drift back to sleep. It has to run it's course so that the chance of it resuming will lessen. It will also make it a little bit easier to sooth her."

"And how do we sooth her?" Throttle asked curiously.

"You talk to her-" Both Throttle and Modo jumped a little bit and looked towards the door when they heard Vinny's voice. "Tell her something to take her mind off of the horror. Something amusing to occupy her mind and chase the dark dreams away. Another way to sooth her is to sing a lullaby, something that Charlie likely sang to her as a child. And just tell her that she's safe. Say it as many times as you have too even if your voice goes out."

"When did you get back?" Modo asked the white mouse as he stepped quietly into the room, his red eyes never once looking away from Shay as he held the copied files that he had made up, then put them down on the dresser.

"Just now. I wasn't sure if it would be a good idea to come directly back after what I found out so I rode around to try and clear my head." Vinny said as he walked over to the bed and just stared down at Shay for a second with an unreadable expression on his face.

He felt torn, seeing her up close after seeing her files. If the circumstances had been normal...he would have just brushed her hair back and kissed her cheek or something, but now-

Now doing even that felt like a violation to him. It just felt wrong on so many levels that he wondered how she had managed to put up with it before. "Vinny how bad is the information that you got from Joey?"

"You can judge for yourself since _everything_ is in those files-" Vinny said as he glanced over his shoulder and pointed to the dresser. Throttle and Modo both moved to get up and paused half way across the room to ask Vinny how bad what was contained in the files was again, but stopped when they turned around to see Vinny sitting on the bed in the same exact spot that both of them had been in before.

His hand was poised over Shays dark hair for a second before he pulled it back and laid down and curled his body around Shay's, getting as close as he could without touching and closed his eyes.

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A short time later both Throttle and Modo were sitting at the dining room table looking through the files and gnashing their teeth in anger. Modo's one eye was glowing a vivid crimson, his expression murderous, the fingers of his metal hand were tapping out a quick paced and violent rhythm on the table.

Throttle wasn't holding out much better.

Every time he started to look over the police report and the statement that Shay had given about the attack on her, his stomach would cramp and he would feel nauseous. And he would feel a peculiar sharp pain in his chest.

He closed his eyes and laid the file aside and rubbed his face with his hands. "Switch with me." He said in a rough sounding tone, causing Modo to look up from the file in his hand and glance at him.

"I'm not sure that you need to see these pictures."

"Just give them here."

"_I'd rather we burn them_." Modo said in a dark tone.

"And I'd rather that we had a time machine so that we could go back and prevent this event from happening _period_. But we don't always get what we want, now hand it over." Throttle said in an impatient tone. Modo made a low growling sound in the back of his throat and closed the file and pretended that he was going to hand it over and then used one of the mini lasers built into the finger tips of his mechanical hand to burn the file.

It was a stupid and childish thing to do-

At least from Throttle's point of view. But Modo didn't his opinion, Throttle shouldn't see the pictures. They'd give him nightmares and possible make it so that he wouldn't be able to look at Shay without seeing those images in his head.

And that would be cruel. So he did the only thing that he could, he destroyed them. Then he sat there for an hour and listened to Throttle's bitching because he felt he wouldn't be able to understand Shay's suffering completely now that he had no idea how badly she had been hurt.

Modo pointed out that the file remaining told how badly she had been hurt and was a little surprised by the pained expression on Throttles face when he said that he needed to understand more so that he wouldn't make a mistake.

He was afraid that unless he saw the pictures that he would forget and fuck something up. Modo didn't say anything after that for a long time. He just sat there thinking that seeing the pictures _shouldn't_ matter.

Yet for some odd reason it mattered a hell of a lot to Throttle.


	27. Chapter 27

The next few days were rougher on them than they cared to admit, especially with the no touching rule that Modo had put into effect. But the guys felt it was just wrong_ not_ to touch Shay when she looked so damn broken. She always looked like she could use a hug, and to be perfectly honest it was difficult to restrain themselves when they needed the contact too. Still Modo had threatened to _stomp_ their asses into the ground if they touched her without her initiating the contact first.

Forcing them into a state of helplessness that was absolutely maddening.

Throttle and Modo got a little bit of a reprieve from the helpless feelings turning them inside out when they worked in the garage, figuring that it would be stupid to have to close the garage down after finally reopening while they worked in there, Vinny was left with Shay.

His job was fairly simple since it was a combination of watchdog duty and trying to coax Shay into resting, and eating properly since she hadn't been doing either one for days and was starting to make herself ill.

It was about nine o'clock in the evening that Friday when Throttle walked into the living room door way after closing the garage and washing his hands, and grabbing a root beer from the fridge to drink while Modo washed up and fixed their dinner.

The room was pitch black despite the fact that the TV was on. The soft glow illuminating only a small area in front of the couch where the coffee table was. He couldn't see anyone in the room, but he could hear the soft sound of someone breathing. Nothing more, just breathing.

Nothing to clue in the breather's location or to indicate whether the person was awake or asleep. He thought about turning on a light, just for a second to see where the person was and mentally went over where he had last seen whom.

Modo was in the kitchen, Vinny was doing the laundry-

Or at least he had been a little while ago so it stood to reason that the breather may have been his bro. But then again, he hadn't seen Shay yet and she usually wandered around aimlessly from nine in the p.m to seven in the a.m before she crashed. And even then, she didn't really sleep. Which was a habit that she had developed after four straight nights of waking up screaming from the nightmares.

He decided against turning the light on and moved out of the door way to the couch and set his drink down when he saw Shay curled up on the couch, her eyes staring blankly ahead at the TV screen. "What are you watching?" Throttle asked softly, trying not to startle her. His efforts didn't work since she hadn't been aware that he was even in the room until he had spoken.

She jumped at the sound of his voice, then jerked herself into a semi sitting position and stared at him wide eyed.

She looked like a ghost to him. Her skin was so pale to begin with, and now it looked even paler because of the dark bruise like dark circles under her eyes. Shay blinked at him in the darkness and lifted one hand to her chest and said, "Dracula; Dead and loving it."

"Mind if I sit down and watch it with you?" Shay shook her head and moved across the couch so that he could sit down. Throttle sat on the opposite side of the couch, as far from her as possible so that he wouldn't end up upsetting her and picked up the remote and turned the TV up a little bit and then set the remote aside and leaned back and propped his elbow on the arm of the chair and settled his cheek in his hand as he watched the movie.

About half way through Throttle noted that Shay kept slumping forward a little bit and then jerking herself back upright. Apparently her restlessness from the past few nights was finally catching up with her.

"Shay."

"Hn?"

"If you want to lay down you can rest your head on my leg. Or I can move to another chair and give you the couch. Whatever you feel is the better choice."

"You're asking me to think aren't you?"

"A little."

"Too tired to think..." Shay said in a drowsy tone as she bit back a yawn. God she was tired. She could barely recall the last time that she had been so tired and that had been right after the incident, when she had been sent to live with her father.

It hadn't been so bad at first. He'd did what he could to make her comfortable and such, but after about a month straight of wetting the bed and waking him up crying; he'd had enough. He had jerked her out of bed and beat the hell out of her every night that she had wet the bed and woke him up after they hit the one month mark. He'd stopped trying to help her and saw her as nothing more than a nuisance.

She looked at Throttle, thinking that he looked awful comfortable across the way. And she would like to be comfortable too. She shifted and slowly, _very_ slowly and cautiously moved towards him and laid her head on his leg and closed her eyes.

Shay sighed and curled up and a few minutes later managed to drift off to sleep for the first time in days wondering if Throttle and the others were going to do the same thing her father had done.


	28. Chapter 28

_He couldn't believe how his angel had reacted to seeing him._

_Instead of running to him and throwing her arms around his neck and telling him that she loved him, she had thrown a wrench at his head. Screamed at him to leave her alone and never return. She had acted like she was utterly terrified of him._

_But that didn't make any sense._

_She loved him. So why had she reacted that way? Shouldn't she be happy that he was back to make her his bride like he had promised?_

_He was worried about her. _

_So much so that he had gone out and bought flowers and a pretty nightgown for her to wear on their honeymoon and had sent them to be delivered along with a little note to let her know that he wasn't angry at her for reacting like that. After all she had been a child the last time she had seen him and her mother and whoever she had been sent to live with might have brainwashed her._

**_To my angel,_**

**_Don't worry. I'll be coming for you soon._**

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The next day a long box was delivered to the garage during working hours. Throttle signed for it and carried it into the garage and set it aside so that he could finish his work. He and Vinny were working in the garage today since Modo had gone out grocery shopping while Shay rested.

She'd had a little bit of a panic attack earlier when she'd dropped her breakfast plate and broken it. Apparently the sound of shattering glass was a trigger. But then the sound had been louder than normal, so maybe it wasn't the sound of the shattering glass, but the _loudness_ of the sound itself since Modo had mentioned that loud, startling sounds could be triggers.

Vinny finished working on the motorcycle that had been brought in and took it for a short ride to check and make sure that the problem had been fixed. He was just pulling back up when Throttle decided to have a look at the box that had been delivered earlier and walked over to the work station and looked the box over, noting that it had Shay's name attached to a little envelope with a heart drawn on it.

"What are you doing?" Vinny asked as he came walking up behind him. Throttle pulled the envelope off of the box and handed it to Vinny who stared at the paper through narrowed eyes as Throttle took the lid off of the box and made an angry hissing sound when he saw the sheer white lace nighty with soft pink hues here and there laying on top of some peonies, and cosmos with another little scrap of paper on it.

Throttle picked up the sheer lace nighty and promptly ripped it to pieces and handed what was left to Vinny as he picked up the little scrap of paper and read it. Five times before realization seeped into his angry mind.

Whoever had sent these things...was the person _responsible_ for hurting her as a felt torn between going and getting Shay and packing her into a car and leaving the state, and going hunting for the low life that had _dared_ to track her down and send her the box.

"Throttle? Throttle what is it?" Vinny asked as he grasped his bros wrist. Throttle had the most murderous look on his face as he handed Vinny the scrap of paper and grabbed up the box and everything in it and walked outside and threw it all in the dumpster around the back of the garage then walked back in and grabbed the note from Vinny and folded it and stuffed it in his pants pocket.

"_That son of a bitch_-" Vinny started to say when he finally managed to regain his ability to speak. He couldn't believe that the person who had hurt Shay as a kid would go so far as to track her down as an adult and send her presents along with a note that could be considered threatening.

It was sick.

_He_ was sick. And he was after their family. Vinny let out a low, mean sounding growl as Throttle snapped at him.

"Quiet! I don't want Shay to know that some-some _sicko_ sent her something."

"But bro!"

"I said be quiet! _She needs to feel safe Vinny!_ We have to run interference and make sure that this shit doesn't get back to her or it could_ break_ her apart-"Throttle snarled as he ran a shaky hand through his hair and took several deep breaths in an effort to calm himself, but it was a difficult thing to do now that they knew that some sick fucker was lurking around the garage somewhere just _waiting_ to get his hands on her. He took one last deep breath then said more softly, "When Modo gets home we'll tell him about the box and the note and see if he can come up with a plan to help keep this shit from Shay."

"Alright-" Vinny said after a second or so as he tossed the shredded lace into the trash can under the work station and turned on his heel and walked towards the door. His anger boiling dangerously. "You talk with Modo when he gets back. I'm going to go check on Shay."


	29. Chapter 29

More gifts came over the span of the next week and finally at the end of the seven days Throttle, Vinny and Modo finally got pissed enough to call Joey when the sick bastard fixating on Shay started to send toys.

Vibrators, beads, eatable body paint, and other things.

It was _disgusting_.

And the notes that the bastard sent along with the toys were stomach churning. They had only made the mistake of reading _one_ and had gotten so sick by what they had read that they had destroyed the note.

But since they couldn't destroy every note or toy (because they needed evidence) they instead put the brightly colored boxes and their contents into their bedroom closet when Shay wasn't around to see them doing so. And waited for the week to end so that Joey would come to them, since none of them now felt it would be safe for Shay if even one of them left the garage.

Joey showed up early Saturday morning at nine forty five. Just twenty minutes after the guys had managed to crawl out of bed and leave Shay, sleeping soundly after a particularly exhausting night. The three had been standing in the kitchen staring at the coffee maker as the machine finished making the coffee when they heard the faint sound of someone knocking on the back door.

"Shit. That's Joey."

"Man, couldn't he come a little later? Like after I've had my breakfast and my coffee-" Vinny whined a little bit as Modo chuckled and said as he walked by the younger man.

"After you've had your weekly _bath_."

"Dude!"

Throttle chuckled in amusement and shook his head as he grabbed a mug and poured himself some of the scalding dark liquid then fixed it the way that he liked it and moved back out of the way so that Vinny could fix his cup before Modo came back into the room with Joey who was holding a big cardboard box with Dunkin Donuts written on the lid. "Hey guys-" Joey said cheerfully as he set the box down on the counter and then looked around. "I figured since I would be imposing on you all so early that I should bring something for us all to eat while we filed that complaint and talked a bit."

"Do you want some coffee?" Vinny asked as Modo not so subtly pushed him out of the way so that he could fix himself a cup before it was gone. Joey smiled and shook his head and politely turned the offer down.

"No man. I had a granola bar earlier so I"m good."

"Hn. Suit yourself, man." Modo said as he poured what was left of the coffee into his mug then turned to face the human as he took a sip of the scalding liquid.

"So...what was it exactly you wanted to file a complaint about?" Joey asked awkwardly.

The guys exchanged a look as they set their coffee mugs down and moved to leave the kitchen. "Modo, go make sure that Shay's still asleep. I don't want her seeing this shit for any reason."

"Right." Modo said as he slipped by the three men and all but ran down the hall to Shay's room and disappeared inside.

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Shay was still sound asleep among the small sea of pillows and cushions on the bed. Her body curled up in the spot that Vinny had been laying in earlier. The comforter was tangled around her hips and the thin cotton sheet under it was the only thing covering her slender shoulders from the slight coolness of the air.

Modo crept silently around the bed and grasped the comforter and carefully pulled it up over Shay's shoulders before starting to inch his way back away from the bed when Shay moaned softly and turned her head and rubbed her face against the pillow for a second. Modo stopped moving and held his breath, silently praying that Shay would stay asleep.

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Joey stared at the contents from each of the boxes that Throttle and Vinny had pulled out of their closet and made a strained hissing sound. This looked like the sort of stuff that would be sent to someone out of affection and as a joke.

And if not for the stomach churningly graphic notes, two of which mentioned the pipe that was used on Shay as a child- Then he might have told the guys to either grow up and stop being embarrassed over toys. But as it turned out this- Was a whole new ball game of _sick_.

Joey examined the stuff, the notes, and then asked some questions and used a small note pad that Vinny found for him to write down the information and once he was done asked if he could take the notes and one or two of the toys back to the station to be dusted for prints. Once the guys agreed to that, Joey told them to destroy the rest then grabbed two or three of the boxes and with their help loaded them into his car in the back of the building.


	30. Chapter 30

Shay lay in her bed staring at the ceiling. She'd lain awake for the past four hours after waking up from a nightmare feeling sick and ashamed. It was _his_ fault. The one who was the cause of her anxiety and pain. Because of him, she had fallen apart and was afraid of everything. It was frustrating. This whole mess made her feel like a frightened child all over again.

She _hated_ it.

No that wasn't the right way to describe how she felt about the situation. She_ loathed_ it.

But didn't know what she could do about it. Pretending it had never happened didn't work. And getting mad about it solved nothing since the incident occurred so long ago.

But she hated feeling _weak_ and _helpless_.

Her head was starting to ache from all of the stress she was under. She groaned and slowly rolled out of bed and decided to go see if there was anything to eat. She pushed the covers off and rolled out of bed and quietly made her way to the door and opened it and peeked out at the empty hall way, wondering where the guys were.

It was half past nine. So maybe Throttle and Modo were in the garage working. But if that was the case, then why couldn't she hear any noise coming from there? She stepped out into the hall and pulled the door closed behind her and started walking down the hall towards the kitchen and paused outside the room when she heard the guys talking.

"Do you think Joey will be able to find the guy?" Modo asked in a hushed tone. Shay flattened her back against the wall, and tilted her head to the side and listened.

"I hope so. The last thing we need is that sick bastard coming here-" Vinny said. _Are they talking about my attacker? _Shay wondered curiously as the pit dropped out of her stomach.

"I've been thinking about that..." Throttle said in a cautious tone before continuing to speak. "Shay didn't start having anxiety attacks and stuff until the day that that guy in the suit came by. In fact until she saw him-she was perfectly fine. She acted...normal, healthy, like nothing at all had happened..."

"You think that she recognized her childhood attacker?" Modo asked in a quiet snarl.

Shay looked down at her toes and waited for someone to say something, but after a moment or so decided that it was time to end the conversation. If she had to think about her attacker coming back to the garage for her- She'd lose her mind.

She made a tapping sound on the wall with her fingernails to announce her presence to them, then waited a second or so and peeked into the room. The three mice looked at her wide eyed with slightly worried/guilty expressions on their faces.

"Shay darlin, how long have you been standing there?" Vinny asked her in a worried tone.

No doubt he was worried that she might have overheard them talking. She bit her lower lip and thought for a second about letting them know that if they wanted to hold little pow-wow's that they should pick someplace she wasn't likely to over hear them talking.

But decided against telling them that since they'd make themselves a man cave somewhere in the apartment and leave her out of the loop from now on.

Besides they didn't need to know that she had overheard them talking, so she held up one finger to indicate that she had just got there and pretended not to notice the_ relieved_ looks that crossed their faces before she walked into the room and made her way over to the fridge and grabbed a box of cereal off the top and then found herself a bowl and a spoon and fixed herself some to eat.

Once she was done she quietly put everything away and then picked up her bowl and grabbed her spoon and tried not to notice how silent and watchful the guys were as she walked past them out of the kitchen and into the dining room.

Throttle, Modo and Vinny all watched Shay quietly. They could_ feel_ that something had changed in her, but they weren't entirely sure what it was. Or what it meant for her. They picked up their coffee cups and made their way into the dining room and sat down and studied her.

Shay, for all outward appearences, looked just like she had for the past few weeks. Physically there was nothing different about her. But there was a little more animation in her movements. She was eating something and didn't seem to be having trouble holding it down. Her color was a little bit better too. She didn't look as pale or lifeless.

Throttle and Vinny both looked at Modo, hoping that he could tell them what it meant. Modo couldn't give them an answer. Not really. So instead he gave them a small encuraging smile.


	31. Chapter 31

After breakfast Shay showered and got dressed and stepped out of her bedroom to find the three mice hanging around in the hall looking concerned/worried. And perhaps a touch scared of what she was planning to do next. They were more than a little surprised when she made her way down the hall.

Brushing past them, and entered the garage for the first time in what seemed like months.

The three mice followed close behind her without getting in her way then stopped just inside the door to the garage so that they could see what she was up too. Both Throttle and Vinny glanced at Modo as their human sat down at her work station, and picked up a wrench, and started working on some car parts that had been left on the table by Vinny a few days ago when he'd worked in the garage.

Modo gave the two a small smile as they stood there watching her work for the better part of an hour before Modo finally said something about needing to cook dinner then clapped the younger two on the shoulders with his hands and walked off.

Taking the visit to the garage for what it really was.

A small diversion that may lead to recovery.

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Joey had been searching through old case files for anything that resembled what was happening with Shayera and hit pay dirt sometime around noon. He'd come across ten cases where a man kidnapped some little girls between the ages of eight and ten, violated them with a foreign object then raped them.

The only real differences between those cases and Shayera's was the fact that none of the children had survived past the rapes where as Shayera had escaped long before that had happened.

They had gone missing on a weekday and been found wrapped in a bloody tarp with chains wrapped around it and then either been buried in shallow graves or dumped in lakes, sometime on the weekend.

He got the name of the suspected abductor/rapist/killer and jotted everything down after checking to see where the guy lived. What was the most chilling of Joey's finds though was that the suspect in all of these cases lived in Chicago- in an apartment building right down the street from the Last Chance garage.

"Oh shit." Joey muttered as he jumped up out of his seat. He needed to tell the guys what he'd learned or the guy might actually get close to Shayera again.

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Shay worked for several hours on the motor before managing to fix it completely then sat back in her seat with a tired sigh and stretched her arms over her head and moved her neck from one side ot the other in an effort to work out some of the kinks in her muscles. As she heard a soft knock on the door behind her and turned, startled by the sudden sound and stared wide eyed at Throttle standing there with a tray balanced on one of his hands.

"Hey, ready for a food break?" He asked softly. Shay nodded her head mutely and he smiled at her and walked into the garage and then carefully moved the motor aside so that he could put the tray down. Then started to place a plate in front of her then a fork and spoon and a glass of juice before fixing her plate for her then setting everything else aside and disappearing.

Or at least she thought he'd disappeared. But the truth of the matter was that he found himself a nice seat on the floor somewhere behind her so that he could watch her eat. Probably because he was concerned that she might not eat if he didn't watch her. Or maybe it was something else.

Whatever it was, he wasn't the only one who watched her. Vinny was still hanging around the garage door and would occassionally peek in to see if Shay was still doing okay.


End file.
